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| © Disney 2018 |
When I first saw news of a Mary Poppins sequel, I was skeptical as I thought the will of the late P.L. Travers said that Disney could not make any kind of sequel to Mary Poppins, I guess Traver’s estate must have been more willing to green-light a sequel, the House of Mouse has ways of making them cave in.
I warn everybody, if I sound biased about this film, don’t take it personal as it’s just one man’s opinion. Mary Poppins Returns was an enjoyable but somewhat unnecessary sequel to Walt Disney’s 1964 timeless classic. The film stars Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins and is joined by Lin-Manuel Miranda as Jack, Ben Whishaw as Michael Banks, Emily Mortimer as Jane Banks, Meryl Streep as Cousin Topsy, Julie Walters as the housekeeper Ellen, and Colin Firth as William “Weatherall” Wilkins.
The film takes place about 30 years after the original and focuses on the Bank’s family in 1930’s London. Jane and Michael Banks have grown up and still live in Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane with Michael’s three children, Annabelle, John, and Georgie. Michael’s wife has recently passed away and he is dealing with ongoing financial issues, issues that will cause them to lose their family house to repossession if not resolved. Just when everything seems lost, Mary Poppins swoops in from the clouds to make things right and becomes a Nanny once again to the Bank’s children. Just like before, Mary Poppins takes the Banks children on many magical adventures and joining them on a few is Jack, a lamplighter who was an apprentice of Bert from the original film, and knows Mary Poppins from his childhood. While Mary Poppins delights the children, Michael is under deep pressure to find a way to save their house and doesn’t know that his lawyers are working with the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank’s president to intentionally stop Michael from paying his debts.
I’ll start off with the positives, I loved the production design, the visual effects, Emily Blunt and a few of the main stars, and some of the songs. The production design made me feel like I was back in Cherry Tree Lane and the imaginative designs of the worlds visited by Mary Poppins, Jack, and the Kids are very creative. I loved the visual effects in this film, they blended seamlessly with the environment and were really colorful at times. I especially loved the Bathtub, China-bowl, and Balloon sequences as the visuals were some of the best that I’ve haven’t seen from Disney in such a long time. Emily Blunt absolutely knocked it out of the park as Mary Poppins, she embodies the spirit of Julie Andrews’ oscar-winning portrayal and made me feel like I was watching a modern version of Mary Poppins being done right. Lin-Manuel Miranda was good as Jack, he’s a worthy successor to Dick Van Dyke’s Bert and has a great sense of positive energy throughout his performance. Ben Whishaw was great as an adult Michael Banks. In many ways, Michael is more like his father George, but he still is the Michael Banks that I saw in the original and the obstacles he has to overcome throughout the film made me sympathize with his character. There were a few good songs of notoriety, the opening song, “Underneath the Lovely London Sky”, Mary Poppin’s first song, “Can you Imagine That?”, and the final song, “Nowhere to Go But Up.”
For all of the positives, there are negatives and a few of them were big negatives to me. The film is basically a retread of the original story but with a few twists and turns, the other songs were unmemorable and forgettable, some of the actors were wasted, the final act is so predictable and somewhat messy. Like I said, the story that was written for this sequel is paint by the numbers and follows the original plot too closely. I liked that they made an effort to twist things up a little with the story but it still kept me from loving the film. Honestly I think the younger generation will appreciate the story more if they haven’t seen the original and it’s fine for them but not fine for me who considers the original to be Walt Disney’s Crowning Achievement in Live Action.
Some of the other actors in the film were given very little time to develop and were considered by me to be wasted and unmemorable. I especially thought that Colin Firth and Meryl Streep were two of the biggest stars to be wasted with very little material to work with. Meryl Streep’s Cousin Topsy was a character that has almost no impact on the story and is only there to tell the children one thing that is after being dragged out by an unnecessary musical sequence that is too close to Uncle Albert’s song “I Love to Laugh.” Colin Firth was just playing your typical bad guy who wants to prevent Michael Banks from paying his debts just because he wants to take advantage of the financial state of London to squeeze out a lot of profit, it just makes him one-sided and not very interesting. The three Banks kids were somewhat different from Jane and Michael, they had some moments of development, but unlike Jane and Michael, I felt they had very little development mostly because they could take care of themselves. Honestly, the kids could be very cringe-worthy during a few scenes some of their acting was rather bland.
I will not remember any of the other songs besides the ones I love, they are too similar to the original songs and have no emotional impact on me as a huge fan of the original songs. Honestly I appreciate Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman for writing new-ish songs for this sequel, but I missed hearing great songs like “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “Step in Time,” and “A Spoonful of Sugar.” To be clear, I don’t mean that I miss hearing those particular songs, I mean songs that have impact like the originals. The final act of the story was too predictable and left a few plotlines unresolved or empty along with some plotlines being resolved too quickly. I won’t get into details but I will say one good thing about the third act, the finale of the film was really good and it has my other favorite song in this film, “Nowhere to Go But Up.” I had a lot of issues with the film, but there were some other nice little touches to the film that made me smile, Dick Van Dyke’s appearance, David Warner as Admiral Boom, Angela Lansbury as the Balloon Lady, Julie Walters as Ellen, and a couple easter eggs from the original film.
Mary Poppins Returns is a sequel that does it’s best to entertain and it surprised me with a great performance from Emily Blunt. It has a couple big problems that keeps me from loving it, but it still put a smile on my face by the end. It’s worth a viewing with the family and a lot of new fans of Mary Poppins will be brought in because of this film. The fans of the original will probably not like it but that’s how it is when a film like Mary Poppins is considered timeless. It’s nowhere near as good as the original and to me is somewhat unnecessary, but it has it’s good moments and will be appreciated for some of it’s technicals and performances.
8.0 out of 10
