Movie Review Mamma Here We Go Again

Mamma Mia Here We Go Again (2018) 

Directed by Ol Parker

Written by Ol Parker 

Starring Amanda Seyfried, Cher, Christine Baranski, Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walter, Dominic Cooper

Release Date July 20th, 2018

Published July 19th, 2018

Low expectations and an upgrade in the director’s chair have combined to make a Mamma Mia sequel so unexpectedly good that I am still humming about it. Mamma Mia Here We Go Again has no right to be as fun and entertaining as it is, based off of the horror show that was the sloppy, 2008 original, and yet here we are. Director Ol Parker has brought order to the chaos of the original Mamma Mia and delivered a prequel/sequel far superior to the dismal original.

Mamma Mia Here We Go Again picks up the story of Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) five years after the action of the original story. Now 25, Sophie is running her mom’s, Donna (Meryl Streep), hotel and is about to hold a gala grand opening. Unfortunately, mom won’t be there. Nor will two of her three adopted fathers, Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and Harry (Colin Firth). Luckily, Sam (Pierce Brosnan) is at hand, along with Auntie Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Auntie Rosie (Julie Walter).

Worse yet though, Sky (Dominic Cooper), despite being Sophie’s one true love and business partner, will not be there either and is considering a job offer in New York. This leads Sophie to once again pick up her mom’s diary for some bolstering. The diary is the lead-in for a flashback to that glorious Greek summer when Donna met Harry, Bill and Sam, and became pregnant with Sophie. Best of all, it brings us the vibrant Lily James as the young Donna.

Do you recall that time you first saw Julia Roberts’ megawatt smile in Pretty Woman? If you’re my age you likely do and you remember the electricity of seeing a movie star emerge before your eyes. That’s Lily James in Mamma Mia Here We Go Again, a star bursting to life before our eyes. Sure, she was great in Cinderella and has honed her craft in other films, but here, she bursts forth with charisma to spare in a one of a kind performance.

James is so great she overwhelms all three of her male co-stars, none of whom make a dent in your memory despite being young and handsome. I could list their names but I couldn’t pick them out of a lineup even after having just seen the movie. James’ vibrancy is such that her co-stars don’t really matter, they are but mirrors through which to bask in Collins’ star-making performance. Can she sing? Yeah, well enough, but like Streep in the first film, she can sell the singing with passion and performance and that’s what matters.

I kept getting annoyed with the present day Sophie storyline for getting in the way of the flashbacks which were far more compelling. Slowly but surely however, the main story begins to turn an emotional corner. The flashback story begins to underline the action of the modern story in lovely ways and what emerges is a story for mothers and daughters and one that isn’t about the absurd and nasty notion of turning into one’s mother. One would count themselves lucky to become Donna.

As for the music of Mamma Mia Here We Go Again, my favorite performance is Waterloo, though it is arguably the most superfluous in terms of the plot. Indeed, I can recognize that praising the one performance that violates the order and structure that I have praised as a remarkable improvement over the original, is slightly contradictory. That said, Lily James and Young Harry (Hugh Skinner) really steal the show in this performance.

Director Ol Parker sets the scene in Paris where Harry and Donna met in 1979, the same summer she left for Greece. Though Donna is leaving, Harry nevertheless, throws himself at her feet and tells her he loves her and then they sing Waterloo at a French restaurant where waiters are dressed as Napoleon (Ho, Ho!). It sounds cheesy and it is, intentionally so. Director Parker directs the performance like an old school, early 80’s music video, a-la Adam Ant’s Goody Two Shoes, with wacky set pieces and even slightly grainy cinematography to really sell the bit.

Waterloo is wildly funny and a wonderfully shorthand way to bring Donna and Harry together before taking them apart. The other standout is My Love, My Life, which will leave many audience members, especially moms and daughters, a weepy mess. The trailer has spoiled that Sophie is pregnant and the correlation between her pregnancy and her mother’s pregnancy, is brought to bear on this wonderful performance with James and Seyfried singing in different time frames with the same meaning.

Ol Parker had an uphill battle to bring the unwieldy mess that was the Mamma Mia backstory into some semblance of order and he’s done an exceptional job. Sure, he takes the easy way out by mostly ignoring the problematic elements of the original backstory, but what he cobbles together works and the orderly plot helps strengthen our bond with these characters, something that was missing in the first film while we puzzled over how all of the pieces fit.

Thanks to director Parker, we can forget about the nonsense of figuring out when the film is set. It's 1979 when Donna meets Sophie’s dad, by the way, and the movie simply gets on with enjoying some Abba. The disco backlash of the early 80’s robbed us of the joy of Abba’s pop silliness and soapy dramatics and I’m glad to have it back, even if it isn’t the most respectable comeback. Abba was a heck of a lot of fun if you give over to them and we’re able to do that here with far less work involved than in the original.

By the time we reach the credits climax with Super Troupers, a reprise from the original movie, featuring the full cast in full Abba regalia, the movie has won us over with its bubbly spirit and Lily James star-calibur, Awards calibur performance. James is a powerhouse movie star. I won’t go as far as to say she deserves an Academy Award, though I am not opposed to the idea, but wow, we don’t need to see anyone else when it comes Golden Globe time, this is your Best Actress in a Comedy or a Musical, hands down.

I went into Mamma Mia Here We Go Again with a sour attitude, assuming it was going to be as insufferable as the original. What a joyous surprise to find that the sequel makes logical sense, fixes the holes punched in the space time continuum in the original, and crafts a heartfelt and quite funny story out of a bunch of goofy, funny, melodramatic tunes from one of the most underrated groups of all time. This is what Mamma Mia should have been all along, a brassy, blowsy, ballsy, belting it to the back of the room Broadway comedy in execution as much as in idea.

Movie Review: Becoming Jane

Becoming Jane (2007) 

Directed by Julian Jarrold

Written by Kevin Hood, Sarah Williams

Starring Anne Hathaway, James MacAvoy, Julie Walters, Maggie Smith, James Cromwell

Release Date August 3rd, 2007

Published August 3rd, 2007

The real life of legendary romance writer Jane Austen is shrouded by mystery and mostly lost to history. All that remains of the real Jane Austen are scraps of letters she wrote to her sister, most of which her sister burned at Ms. Austen's request. Also left is the one and only portrait of Jane Austen, a hand drawn caricature also done by her sister. That portrait remains a treasure in England where it hangs in the Jane Austen museum, the home of her brother where Jane wrote her masterpiece Persuasion before passing away at age 41.

Jane Austen remains a national treasure in England where her Pride & Prejudice has seen remarkable sales for over a century. The books many adaptations have won accolades, television ratings and banked large box office sums as well. Now comes an American attempt at telling the life story of this British legend. Becoming Jane stars American Anne Hathaway and posits a fictional romance in order to tell the story of Ms. Austen's inspiration for Pride & Prejudice.

This may sound like blasphemy to any Englishman with good sense, and indeed it may be. However, much of Becoming Jane is a splendid little trifle of a romance that is never dull and often quite enchanting.

Anne Hathaway, the gifted young star of the Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada, takes on the challenging role of Jane Austen the author of such timeless romances as Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility and Persuasion. Becoming Jane is a fictional take on how Jane Austen was inspired to write her first masterpiece, Pride & Prejudice, and the decisions about love and family that would shape her too short life.

James McAvoy (Starter For 10) plays Tom LeFroy, a real life aquaintance of Jane Austen, though they were never romantically linked as far as any historian knows. In the fictional world of Becoming Jane, LeFroy is a boy lawyer living off his uncle, a judge, when he meets Jane, the eldest of the Austen sisters and the one required by family to marry above her station in order to keep the family solvent.

Jane's younger sister Cassandra (Anna Maxwell Martin) is already promised to a young man who will take over their father's church one day. Thus, it is left to Jane to make certain that her mother (Julie Walters) and youngest brother, a handicapped boy, are taken care of through her marriage. Jane however, refuses to marry without love.

Unfortunately, Tom is not of rich enough stock for Jane to marry. Being a young man in the law profession, it will be many years before he is solvent and able to take over the family fortune and good name of his uncle. Even then, he will need to be well married in order for his uncle to approve and their is simply no way that his uncle would approve of Jane, the peasant daughter of a church minister.

Thus the story of Pride & Prejudice played out in the life of Jane Austen. In reality, it is far more likely that Jane witnessed similar stories from afar or simply imagined the class warfare and invented her work. Historical fact however, is irrelevant to a light hearted, childish, Disney romance like Becoming Jane. This a simpleminded romance with only the goal of placing obstacles between two star-crossed lovers and hoping that we are compelled to ooh and ahh at their potential for life long companionship.

That Becoming Jane manages to be quite winning even as it tramples upon the real life story of a literary legend is quite a feat. Nevertheless, Becoming Jane is a real charmer.

Put aside for a moment the many blasphemies of Becoming Jane, such as a plot so easygoing and unpretentious that Ms. Austen herself likely would have trashed the paper it was written on. Forget the historical inaccuracies and the fake romance and the carelessness inherent in adapting the life story of a legend and then bending the facts of her life to the conventions of a typical romantic comedy.

Forget all of that for a moment, and understand that Becoming Jane may be an awful idea in theory, it is quite successful in execution. Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy spark a lovely little onscreen romance of salty banter, smoldering gazes and painful partings. Meanwhile, director Julian Jarrold keeps the mood light and airy but with a professional flair, with just a hint of the goofy vibe of his previous international success, Kinky Boots.

The Jane Austen cult is likely to revolt over seeing the life of their legend so simplistically drawn on screen and they have a point. Becoming Jane plays fast and loose with the life story of a historic literary figure. But therein lies the boldness of the enterprise. Their is a cheeky vibe to the lack of kneeling and bowing at the feet of legend and that gives just a slight spark to an already sparky, charming little romance.

For non-Austen-ites, Becoming Jane is just the kind of movie treat that goes down easy on a friday night.

Movie Review Paddington

Paddington (2014)

Directed by Paul King

Written by Paul King 

Starring Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi

Release Date November 24th, 2014

Published November 23rd, 2014 

The trailer for “Paddington” is among the worst I have seen in some time. Based on the trailer one would not be incorrect in the assumption that “Paddington” will be another in a series of insulting takes on beloved children’s properties such as “The Chipmunks,” or “The Smurfs.” The trailer features gross out humor, bad slapstick and, worst of all, not one, single, solitary laugh.

That was just the first trailer. The second trailer only seemed to pile the dirt higher on the film’s grave. The follow up trailer introduced Nicole Kidman as the film’s villain, a taxidermist determined to make Paddington the next prize in her museum collection. Ms. Kidman’s career has been on a steady decline for some time now and her status, plus the general awfulness of both trailers seemed to signal doom for “Paddington.”

So, imagine my surprise when upon seeing “Paddington” I did not find a steaming pile of Smurf like offal. Imagine, in fact, expectations so lowered by awful marketing that I found myself delighted by “Paddington.”  Yes, the lowered expectations helped, but truly “Paddington” is really quite unexpectedly good.

“Paddington” features the voice of Ben Whishaw as the titular bear, a rare breed from deepest, darkest Peru who learned to talk from his grandparents who were visited by an Englishman in some timeless realm. The Englishman invited the bears to come visit him in England any time and when poachers begin poking around the forest, Paddington is sent off to England for safe keeping.

During World War II as London was besieged by German bombers, children were evacuated from the city. Some of the children were orphaned by the bombings and to give them a new life in a new town they were often given only a cardboard sign around their neck asking that someone please take care of them. Knowing this story, Paddington is given a similar sign upon his arrival in London.

Found by the Brown family, including mother Mary Brown (Sally Hawkins), father Henry Brown (Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville) and their two children, Judy (Madeline Harris) and Jonathan (Samuel Joslin), Paddington quickly finds a new home while also beginning his search for the Englishman who once invited his family to England.

A rather convoluted backstory introduces Nicole Kidman as Millicent, the film’s villainous Taxidermist. That the role is not a complete embarrassment to the one time box office star and Academy Award Winner is something of a triumph. You can sense from the beginning that this is a movie Kidman made so her children could see her and yet the compromise somehow doesn’t harm the performance. Kidman hams it up to surprisingly good effect in “Paddington.”

First time feature director Paul King makes “Paddington” work by creating a very simple, pleasant tone. The film is gentle and sweet and, aside from the abysmal bathroom sequence seen in the trailer, avoids being simpleminded and pandering. Smartly no effort is made to make Paddington hip or modern, the film exists in a time warp, it’s very own universe with familiar rules, save for the fact that bears can talk.

Aside from the bathroom scene from the trailer, the fact that no one in England finds a talking bear odd is the film’s biggest flaw. I hate it when a movie makes the fantastic seem common place. Aliens, superheroes, and talking bears are something to marvel at if they’ve never been seen before. Avoiding how unusual a talking bear is plays like a joke that only the filmmakers found funny.

I generally don’t care for movies that are described as ‘Gentle’ or ‘Pleasant’ but I didn’t mind it so much in “Paddington.” Something about the plushy “Paddington” invites ‘Gentle’ and welcomes ‘Pleasant.’ Had the marketing campaign played up the gentle and pleasant aspects of “Paddington” rather than the one, outlying scene of misguided antics, I might have even more appreciation for “Paddington.”