About That Mary Poppins Movie

Disney's remakes of their older classics have tended to fall into two broad categories.  First you have the ones like "Beauty and the Beast," which copy the original film beat for beat, with a few variations to update them a bit.  Then you have looser adaptations like "Maleficent" and "Alice in Wonderland," which can be more subversive, and usually tend to warp the original narratives into modernized empowerment fantasies.  

I'm sad to say that "Mary Poppins Returns" is of the former variety, even though it takes place about twenty years after the original when Jane and Michael Banks (Emily Mortimer, Ben Whishaw) have grown up.  Michael has his own children, John, Annabel, and Georgie (Nathanael Saleh, Pixie Davies, and Joel Dawson). Due to money troubles and the recent death of his wife, Michael's life is in shambles, and he's on the verge of losing the family home.  Fortunately, Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) returns during this crucial time, ready to take up her position as the indispensable nanny once more.

The particulars of the story are much more serious this time around, with the looming threat of homelessness, and a proper villain in the form of a corrupt banker, Wilkins (Colin Firth).  Otherwise, "Mary Poppins Returns" sticks to the structure and formula of the first movie with few exceptions. Most of the changes are literal one-to-one substitutions, such as Dick van Dyke's Bert being replaced with Lin-Manuel Miranda's lamplighter, Jack, and we're down from two domestics to just one, the housekeeper Ellen (Julie Walters).  The film often seems determined to reference or revive every single thing anyone might have enjoyed in the 1964 "Mary Poppins," from the bottomless handbag to the nutty mariner, Admiral Boom (David Warner), shooting off cannons at the end of the lane.

This is the most obvious with the songs and fantasy sequences.  Instead of a jolly holiday in a chalk drawing singing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," this time Mary Poppins takes the children into an animated sequence in a piece of painted crockery and sings "The Cover is Not the Book."  Instead of a nocturnal adventure with the chimney sweeps singing "Step In Time," this time it's with Jack's fellow lamplighters, or "leeries," singing "Trip a Little Light Fantastic." Remember the tea party on the ceiling with Ed Wynn's Uncle Albert singing "I Love to Laugh"?  Now it's Meryl Streep as Cousin Topsy, singing "Turning Turtle," as her repair shop turns upside-down. And it doesn't help that the score is constantly quoting the original music. I caught snatches of "Spoonful of Sugar," "Let's Go Fly a Kite" and even "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank."

All of this is very raucous and energetic, but it's only the rare moment that matches up to anything in the first movie.  Marc Shaiman does his best, but clearly isn't on the level of the Sherman brothers. The effects work is fantastic, but rarely do we see anything inventive or novel.  I thought there were two fantasy sequences that were really impressive - the trip into the porcelain bowl where the live-action actors interact with 2D animated characters in a way that we haven't seen from Disney in ages, and the finale where kites are swapped for balloons.  The rest tend to feel like echoes of the superior originals. I tried my best to consider "Mary Poppins Returns" separate and apart from the 1964 film, but it's all impossible considering how determined the filmmakers are to remind viewers of the first "Mary Poppins" at every turn.  

Emily Blunt successfully steps into the title role, by being just different enough of a "practically perfect" nanny that her performance can be taken on its own terms.  Her Mary is a little softer and more prone to smiling. However, the rest of the characters are far less successful. Lin-Manuel Miranda is pleasant enough, but pretty bland.  Emily Mortimer gets very little to do. Ben Whishaw is sympathetic, but uninteresting. I also found it an odd choice that the children are unrealistically mature and well-behaved for their circumstances, clearly not needing a nanny.  The point is that Mary Poppins is really there for Michael, but the children hardly even behave like children, which undercuts a lot of the smaller moments of magic and wonder.

  

It has been a very, very long time since I've seen the original "Mary Poppins" with Julie Andrews, but not long enough that I don't remember how and why it worked so well.  That was a movie about the fantastic intruding upon the lives of ordinary people living ordinary lives. There's nothing ordinary about anything in "Mary Poppins Returns." The family is in a terrible crisis and recovering from tragedy.  Thus all the quieter little character-building moments showing the Banks interacting in their day-to-day lives have been supplanted by plotty business with missing bank shares and an excess of emotional turmoil. There's a terribly rushed feeling to the film, where everything builds up to a big, exciting action conclusion that feels wholly unnecessary.  

I have no doubt that everyone involved in "Mary Poppins Returns" loved and wanted to do right by "Mary Poppins."  There are little tributes everywhere, including an opening title sequence based on the work of beloved Disney artist Peter Ellenshaw, who gets a big shout-out in the credits.  However, this is a prime example of a film that seems to exist solely to capitalize off of the nostalgia of an older classic. And it does so with ruthless efficiency, and not nearly enough magic.

  

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