Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a 2018 dystopian sci-fi musical about a Greek island where all music apart from ABBA has been outlawed.

Ten years after reading her mum’s sex diary, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) has inherited Donna’s (Meryl Streep) hotel and is hard at work making all the impoverished locals prepare for a grand reopening while forced to listen to horribly sung ABBA songs. Meanwhile in flashback we see how Donna (Lily James) embarked on her ABBA-themed sex tour of Europe, squatted in the farmhouse that would become the hotel, and acquired her famous dungarees. This makes the film both a prequel and sequel, like The Godfather Part II with more ABBA songs.

Considering we know what happens in the flashback timeline and nothing is happening in the present-day, the sequel has neither stakes nor story, even compared to the inconsequential paternal roulette of the 2008 movie. But we are not here for the plot; we’re here for the ABBA songs, and on that metric the movie delivers, albeit to a lesser dungaree than the original. The sequel quickly runs out of tracks from ABBA Gold and works its way down to ABBA Tin, while recycling some of the tunes from the first film. Fortunately the Swedish pop group has an endless supply of weirdly specific songs about creepy domestic situations whose lyrics are easy to act out, especially when staged in a Napoleon-themed restaurant.

The choreography surpasses the original (insofar as there actually is some), and there is even a real singer involved this time in the form of Cher. We also meet the flashback versions of Tanya and Rosie (Jessica Keenan Wynn and Alexa Davies), who have been wearing the same wigs for 40 years, but are well cast as the young friends; Wynn in particular makes the best Christine Baranski since Joanna Lumley.

Curiously though this modicum of professionalism makes Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again less enjoyable and funny than its iconic predecessor, without director Phyllida Lloyd there to lose all control of the hara-karaoke spectacle. While everyone is still clearly having fun (none more so than Colin Firth), it almost resembles a film rather than a group of amateurs getting completely wasted on vacation from their acting careers. It is only when Meryl Streep performs in her sparkly fringed jumpsuit at the end that the sequel hits those unique notes again.