Directed by Rob Marshall
starring Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Meryl Streep with cameos by Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury and a walk-on by Karen Dotrice, the original Jane
Recommended? Yes! Fine family fare.
I wish I were a child again, if only to have experienced Mary Poppins Returns with the same sense of awe, wonder, and delight with which I experienced the original Disney Mary Poppins.
I'm afraid that I still adore that 1964 picture, with a tart Julie Andrews as the magical yet no-nonsense nanny in turn-of-the-century England. It had whimsy and pathos, the fantastical mix of animation and live action, an episodic structure, lessons about both capitalism and charity, a touch of history in Mrs. Banks' involvement in the suffragette movement, and the dazzling spectacle of incredible dance numbers. Plus those unforgettable Sherman Brothers tunes that drilled the nonsensical phrases chim-chim-cheree and supercalifragilistic and um-diddle-liddle-liddle-um-diddle-li deep into my brain.
Yes, I wish I hadn't been so profoundly affected by that so I might properly appreciate the sequel, Mary Poppins Returns.
Don't get me wrong -- the new Poppins is delightful. Played with the same stern-but-amused air by Emily Blunt, this Poppins returns some 30 years after the original to marshall the three young children of a grown-up Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw), who is looked after by his loving sister Jane (Emily Mortimer) and an overwhelmed housekeeper Ellen (Julie Walters) after the loss of his wife. The family's foundation is rocked when Michael fails to pay the mortgage and their house on Cherry Tree Lane is about to be foreclosed on by the bank unless Jane and Michael can find the valuable bank share certificates their late father left to them.
The typical Mary Poppins shenanigans begin immediately, as she marches the three kids -- John, Annabel, and Georgie -- into the bathroom for a bath that turns into an eye-dazzling deep sea adventure complete with dolphins, pirates, and giant bubbles. As the children soon discover that their home is in danger, they consider selling a Royal Doulton china bowl their late mother told them was priceless, and a squabble over it leads to yet another adventure, with Poppins and her young lamplighter friend Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda) whisking the children into the animated world inside the bowl, leading to a major English music hall song and dance by Mary and Jack, followed by a hair-raising ride by the older children, chasing after some animated bandits who attempt to kidnap Georgie and steal the family's possessions. Back in the real world, Mary takes the children and the damaged bowl to visit her cousin Topsy (Meryl Streep), who supposedly can fix anything. Except that Topsy's world has literally turned upside down, and there is a big song and dance number in which Topsy realizes that everything turning around only represents a refreshing new perspective on things.
As the story continues, Mary orchestrates a visit to the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank where Michael works, to coincidentally have the children discover that the bank's new president (Colin Firth) is scheming underhandedly to repossess the Banks' home. All's well that ends well, as Mary joins Jack and his lamplighter friends for a little song and dance to lift the children's spirits, and there is an eleventh-hour miracle that saves the family's home in the end.
The animation is top-notch, the costumes colorful and interesting, and the songs -- churned out by Broadway and movie score veteran Marc Shaiman with lyrics by Scott Whitman -- are sprightly and serviceable. The filmmakers have worked very hard to repeat most of the beats of the original film: Admiral Boom next door still sets off his cannon every hour, disturbing every household; with the vote for women already won, now Jane Banks is deeply entrenched in the British labour movement, going to demonstrations and carrying signs; in the tradition of American Dick Van Dyke's role as a chimney sweep, American Lin-Manuel Miranda steps in to play a lamplighter, replete with awful Cockney accent; and once again, the Banks children experience amazing, otherworldly events that Mary later staunchly denies, including a visit to another magical relative. It's all very cute and very entertaining.
It's just that it's all been done before and done better.
1. The Banks children don't need a nanny, as is pointed out in the film. They seem to manage themselves just fine, even if the youngest, Georgie, is portrayed as a bit rambunctious. And despite having lost their mother, they don't seem especially raw about it. (A small quibble, since Mary makes plain that she really returned to the household to save the children's father, Michael.)
2. Mary Poppins sweeps in and takes over, even though it is clear that Michael Banks cannot pay her any wages. In the first Mary Poppins movie, she is extremely insistent on what she should be paid and when, so this seems out of character.
3. The mix of animation and live action is no longer an anomaly to moviegoers, thanks to digital technology and CGI, so the scenes in the world of the Royal Doulton china bowl don't have the impact that they should. And though the penguins return, they basically make a cameo.
4. Meryl Streep's Topsy character is not as fully fleshed out as it should be. She has a terrible Russian or gypsy accent of some kind, which the Banks kids actually comment on, and it is never explained why her world turns upside down. At least Uncle Albert's ability to rise from the floor was explained as a disease caused by laughter, the antidote for which was to think sad thoughts.
5. I like Lin-Manuel Miranda, he's an incredibly talented person, but I don't think of him as a dancer (I also have not seen Hamilton on stage, so maybe I just don't know). Though he appears in the production number where the lamplighters do their dance, he doesn't have a solo or a spotlighted part in it. The dance was fine, but lacked the snap crackle pop of "Step In Time" from the original. Overall, the Jack character is kind of lackluster, maybe because he isn't romancing Mary. He is barely romancing Jane, though the film seems to think they are a perfect match.
6. Which brings me to another observation: This film is lacking tap-dancing. Like, real old-fashioned hoofing. Jack and Mary do some footwork in their number at the Royal Doulton Hall, but there's no tapping or clogging. In his cameo toward the end of the film, 92-year-old Dick Van Dyke does a couple of steps, which only reminds me of what the flick is missing.
7. The music is pleasant and the songs are fun, but not one of them is catchy. I didn't come out of the theater singing any of them. Part of the problem may be that most of the tunes are stuffed to the gills with lyrics. The setpiece of the Royal Doulton Music Hall scene is a tune called "A Cover Is Not A Book," but the verses fly by so fast and so furiously that it's difficult to grab onto anything. Lin-Manuel has a part in the tune in which he's basically rapping -- which is reminiscent in some ways to Bert's fast-talking paean to all the girls he's known in "It's A Jolly Holiday With Mary" -- but it is hard to decipher what he is saying amid all the music and all the visual spectacle. It's unfortunate that the music, for all its effort to be clever, lacks the hooks a simpler approach could have provided.
8. The bad guy in this movie -- primarily Colin Firth's bank president at Fidelity Fiduciary Bank -- is mean for no reason. Just because ... money, I guess. But the Banks home is hardly a mansion. As the action takes place in the 1930s during "The Great Slump" -- the British version of the Great Depression -- I guess companies were doing anything to gain and keep a buck. Since every movie needs a villain, as it was in the original, it should be the bank.
9. The film wraps up with a scene in the park where the family buys balloons that float them up into the atmosphere, kind of a riff on the "Let's All Fly A Kite" ending of the original. Except in this one, everyone winds up flying around in the clouds. I thought this was confusing, because Mary Poppins wasn't there, she didn't make it happen, and it was happening to everyone in the park who bought a balloon (except evil old Colin Firth). This fantasy -- which included a song by the balloon vendor played by the ever-delightful Angela Lansbury -- was sooooo not needed and kind of broke the rules about magic happening only when Mary was directly involved.
10. As soon as we saw Jane and Michael's old kite being stuck in the trash, didn't we know that the answer to all the family's problems was right there on its patched surface?
Anyway, despite my quibbles, the movie is still good old-fashioned family fun. Your young ones will adore it and sing in grateful chorus, well done, Mary Poppins Returns! The rest of us will just have to take a spoonful of sugar to make this flick go down without wishing for Julie Andrews.
*All photos are screenshots, courtesy ABC/Disney Studios.
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