Mary Poppins Returns (Review)
Mary Poppins Returns Captures Everything We Loved About the First Film.
Let me start by saying that Mary Poppins Returns is a perfect spiritual sequel to the beloved family film. It features beautiful costuming, wonderful visual effects, and plenty of musical numbers with catchy songs that will get stuck in your head. It’s probably one of the best family films of the year. That being said, Mary Poppins is a narcissistic, gaslighting elder god that rides in on the storm and shows children things that would drive any sane man mad.
Emily Blunt has had quite a year in the movies with A Quiet Place and now Mary Poppins Returns. She proves to be more than capable of taking over the iconic role from Julie Andrews. She embodies the very definition of a no-nonsense British nanny tasked with taking care of a new generation of Banks children (played by Nathanael Saleh, Pixie Davies, and Joel Dawson). It’s no easy task, but luckily she has Lin-Manuel Miranda to serve as a replacement for Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep character (who also has a cameo in the film). Together they all get into wonderous adventures into unbelievable worlds with plenty of musical numbers to teach them valuable life lessons along the way.
Despite the fact that Mary Poppins Returns has a fresh coat of paint it sticks to all the elements that worked so well from the original. In fact, it’s an almost paint by numbers sequel to the original. Mary and her young wards travel to plenty of animated realms have a real Disney aesthetic to them. Even the costuming for the sequences all have incredibly vivid feelings to them. Director Rob Marshall certainly did his due diligence when it came to capturing the look and feel of the first Mary Poppins, and his experience working on musicals certainly pays off. However, it’s all a little too familiar. It certainly offers plenty of new songs and new worlds for the characters to explore, but Mary Poppins Returns does little to differentiate itself from the original. Because of that, it’s little more than just a sequel riding on the coat tales of the iconic first film.
Strangely enough, people mock Dick Van Dyke’s cockney accent from the original film and I can’t help but feel the same way about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s performance in Mary Poppins Returns. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a tremendous musical performer and tends to be the best part of a number of scenes. However, he’s doesn’t really pass as a 1930’s British luminary (gas lamp lighter). Of course, this is honestly just nitpicking, but I find it humorous that Mary Poppins Returns doesn’t try harder with the role considering van Dyke’s recent apology. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed Miranda in this film and hope that we get to see much more of him in the future. His performance alone warrants a revival of movie musicals and I’m certain that he will definitely get a chance to perform at the upcoming 2019 Academy Awards for an inevitable nomination for Best Original Song.
One thing that you have to realize about Mary Poppins is that she is not a nice person. After all, she was the one that suggested that a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down and that’s very much a theme when it comes to her character. She repeatedly gaslights the young Banks children insisting that their recollections of events are “absurd” or “ridiculous.” This is all done in good fun, but I’d hate to see the therapy bill that comes from the realization that their childhood nanny was responsible for warping their sense of reality. Then again, dragging the children into living fever dreams where anthropomorphic predators attempt to do them harm is probably more than enough to envoke years of therapy all on their own. This isn’t so much a comment on the quality of Mary Poppins Returns, but its something I couldn’t help but notice when it came to this version of the character. She may be fanciful, but there’s also something slightly unsettling about her as well.
Mary Poppins Returns is pure whimsy at its finest. It’s a kid-friendly film that the whole family can enjoy. While it certainly has its fair share of problems and doesn’t quite stack up to the original, it’s a sequel that’s been well worth the 44-year wait. They certainly don’t make movies quite like this anymore (though Christopher Robin certainly had a similar feel to it) and it’s a refreshing break from animated films that pander to little kids in the audience. Those who have small children won’t want to miss an opportunity to see this striking film on the big screen (especially in Dolby Digital format). However, if you don’t have a kid to treat to Mary Poppins Returns than it might not be worth your time. This is one family-friendly film that really requires a family in order to be enjoyed to the utmost.
