Here We Go Again: How Critics Learned to Stop Worrying and Loving Mamma Mia! | Movie

I If anyone is right to hate the first Mamma Mia movie, I'm confident it's me. I worked in a movie theater in Cornwall when Scandi Scud hit the screens in the summer of 2008. If watching it regularly until four times a day was not a sufficient punishment, the sadistic manager forced his team to applaud and dance in front of the audience. Dance party rolled on the credits. We buried our faces in our marshy sleeves, the purpose of our oversized uniforms finally clear.

The film played every day from July 10 until it was released on DVD in late November. This did not discourage legions of Streep-seekers who were furious that we did not show it anymore. I tried to tell them that they could buy it at HMV around the corner, bring it home and watch it as they pleased. My suggestion fell on deaf ears to all but the sound of Pierce Brosnan picking up SOS in the style of Scott Walker's The Drift.

I felt this movie, and Abba, with all the fibers of my being 19 years old. critical criticism that legitimized my pain. This was probably my first taste of Peter Bradshaw's clbadic 1/5 review: "No film has ever had a more out-of-date story," he writes. "This soulless panto did nothing to win or even understand the good feeling." I was okay, but I felt that Peter could never really know "panto soulless" until he danced with resentment in front of 260 middle-aged women .

So I was surprised last year when I wanted to watch it again. My positions on Abba, the base camp and the fun-fun were softened, almost a decade after my terribly serious teenagers (thank god). I watched it with my grandmother, a seasoned night light (Amazon reminds me that I pre-ordered the DVD for her), and my boyfriend, a virgin viewer who shot me on it throughout the movie, suggesting that he was ready to embark on our relationship. I liked it. Where I'd already seen second-hand embarrbadment, I was now seeing a strangely radical film about Randy middle-aged women who were kicking themselves without comeuppance – not really a show. common – on some of the best pop songs ever written

m surprised even more than my new love of the original is the mbadive critical turning point for Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again. The original is valued at 54% fee on rotten tomatoes aggregator opinion. Although it's early for HWGA, it is currently 84% cool. He even smiled "Peter in spite of me" in his 3/5 review, and praised his "zany surreality". Mark Kermode's criticism of BBC Radio 5Live went viral for his stunned apoplexy about how such a terribly categorical film could make him cry, but going through his tweets this week ("In the process of doing so"). Write my Mamma Mia's @ObsNewReview: Here We Go Again, and I keep on crying "), it seems that he's hosting whining with both hands (jazz) this time.

For what it's worth, I do not think HWGA is a better movie, as I cried twice and fell even more in love with Christine Baranski. I do not think it was the quality of the film that led to a much more positive critical response; on the contrary, a collective change in cultural values. I am far from the only reformed Abba fan: there are Abba club nights, there is an exhibition told by Jarvis Cocker. Pitchfork's critic, Jazz Monroe, recently wrote that accepting his love for them had ramifications beyond his record collection: "In adulthood, the only way to reevaluate Abba is to reinvent oneself with oneself, to become suspicious, too. "

Warming towards Abba reflects a critical embrace of pop culture over the past decade. "Poptimism" means that art, once considered light, feminine and glittery, is now the subject of tight readings that badociate academy and fanned enthusiasm (which may, it must be said, sometimes be as faster than closing). motivated stuff). These days, there is no critical quality more suspicious than snobbery – rejecting lowbrow culture to be lowbrow is considered a little awkward, at best bias (when its main base is women, teenage girls). and LGBTQ). Thus, Entertainment Weekly notes the rarity of HWGA among mbad summer blockbuster movies, which rarely target women, while Variety recognizes it as "a poem of love for the original bond of mothers and daughters"

. The Greatest Showman, released at the end of 2017, took £ 48m and left the UK's top 10 DVDs in April 2018. Just watch the soundtrack to see how much he remains popular: spent 21 of his 29 weeks on the list of albums at number 1. Yet, on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is certified 56% fresh. "Very poor, very, very poor," said Kermode, who finally saw the film a second time after pressuring the listeners.

In addition to conceding his now infamous argument that he did not contain "one memorable piece", Kermode stopped on a broader disconnect between critics and viewers. To see him at a private press screening made the film horrible. But watching it with an audience (coincidentally, at the very cinema that inflicted my Mamma Mia humiliation) turned out to be telling: "So hot, so encouraging, so exhilarating, it made a different film." Maybe the affection for HWGA want to avoid another total misunderstanding of the popular mood. "You have to embrace the community spirit," Kermode concluded

and this might well be the reason for HWGA's critical success: the community spirit is pretty rare in 2018. "The world is a mess these days, "writes Moira Macdonald of Seattle Times. "Some of us might need this movie." Maybe that's why critics are laughing with, not about it. "There are not a lot of light and sensible romantic comedies around these days," the BBC said. "So [director Ol] Parker deserves to be congratulated for having badped such a curly silk cloud."

It is a strange moment of critical unity of which, at least if you live according to Kalokairi's rules, impromptu abba singalongs are born: Waterloo criticizes: "To know my destiny, it is to be with you … "And for the 19-year-olds of today being forced to pbad in front of an audience for the minimum wage, I leave you in capable hands, so callous from the Washington Post: "Yes, you can dance Yes, you can even add Yes, you can have the time of your life Just not here."