Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again - More torturous than the entire 'Hostel' franchise

I don't know why I watched this film.  Actually, I do.  I was forced to (or rather 'emotionally blackmailed').  I hate musicals - every last one of them.  However, I was told that  this one was 'really good' and I have to confess to having occasionally grooved along to Abba's 'Dancing Queen' at the odd seventies night throughout the years.  How bad can it be?  I thought.  It's bad.  Very bad.

Unsurprisingly, I didn't watch the first film, so who's who kind of eluded me and why someone would have 'three dads' had to be explained to me.  The characters were just awful - pretentious and 'forced lovability' does not make someone endearing.  They were just all too perfect and (allegedly) quirky.  All the way through I thought I was watching some sort of Richard ('Four Weddings, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones' and that other film too terrible to mention ending 'Actually') Curtis spin-off film.  Of course my fears were proved true during the end credits when I found his name attached to it.

I have nothing against the actors.  I own many movies containing every last one of them.  This was purely a way to take a good actor and make them into a non-CGI version of Jar-Jar Binks.  A character walks on screen.  They open their mouth.  I want to bludgeon them to death with a copy of Abba's Greatest Hits.  It really is quite a feat to make every single character that annoyingly-perfect.

Then there's the story (or should I say 'story').  There isn't really one.  Some blubbering young woman wants to rebuild a shack in Greece and turn it into a hotel because her (now deceased hippy) mother fell in love there with three different men there.  Therefore we're treated to cut scenes showing her building it, then it getting wrecked by a storm that happened to come, then rebuilt etc.  Then no one's going to come to the VIP opening.  Then they are.  Things just happen.  Deal with it.  However, this is actually just a sub-plot.  The 'meat' the experience is one long string of flashbacks showing her mother being unable to decide which guy she likes best about thirty years ago.  This all means every scene is an excuse to loosely link in to an Abba song which they sing, dance and, er, sing a bit more.

Then there's the humour.  Yes, this has 'humour' in it.  Only the 'jokes' are literally the worst you've ever seen.  Listening to the complete works of Christmas Cracker jokes would be more entertaining than the forced (and soooo predictable) humour that was displayed here (and weirdly what the cinema audience around me was actually laughing to!).

It's a musical.  Yes, you know that and so did I.  So I can't complain too much.  I should have known how this genre affects me.  It's so treacle-sweet most of my teeth rotted away.  Everyone has to be happy and every loose end has to be tied so neatly, no matter how this course of action forces the script to crowbar in yet another unbelievable plot device.

I hate all musicals.  I swear I will never watch another (excluding successful blackmail attempts by close family members).  However, I have to point out that I am clearly the minority.  Everyone in the cinema loved it (as did the person who dragged me to watch it - it was her THIRD viewing of this abomination).  There is clearly a market for this sort of film. I am clearly not it.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch hordes of flesh-eating corpses get decapitated while Iron Man thwarts an alien invasion in New York.

Oh, but I did chuckle a few times during the 'cake-gag' run midway through the film.

2/10 Scuzzier than the leftover goo from a Queen alien's egg sack