Mary Poppins delivers a jolly holiday
This Disney update on the classic is super-casted, fast, linguistic, extra sweet, explosive!
I can almost hear the complaints now. Like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, another beloved property resurrected after many years, Mary Poppins Returns hits all the same beats, in roughly the same order, with characters and situations either identical to those in the 1964 original or traced over as if by an animator’s pencil.
Well, you know what I say to those people? Go fly a kite!
Mary Poppins Returns is set “in the days of the Great Slump,” or about 1930, which places it some 20 years after the original. Those original Poppins poppets, Jane and Michael Banks, have grown into Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer. She’s a labour organizer (Mrs. Banks was into women’s rights, you’ll recall) and he’s a father of three and a recent widower, because this is a Disney movie.
He’s also in danger of losing the house they grew up in, which has been lovingly re-created for this movie, along with some props that fans of the original will remember. And so down from a cloud floats Mary Poppins, played this time out by Emily Blunt, greatly helped by a slightly updated Julie Andrews-esque wardrobe.
The wherefore of the plot is neatly encapsulated in three lines of dialogue. “I’ve come to look after the Banks children,” says the super-nanny. Michael’s kids respond: “Us?” She looks at them, distracted: “Yes, you too.” See what she did there?
So Poppins and her young charges embark on an episodic series of adventures, including another foray into an animated realm, this time through a china bowl rather than a sidewalk painting; and a trip to visit cousin Topsy (Meryl Streep) that echoes the tea-party-onthe-ceiling from the original and is, I’m sad to report, quite an unnecessary scene. But just as Mr. Banks had lessons to learn in the first movie, his grown children need to be reminded of what Mary Poppins stands for.
Easier done than said, what with direction by Rob Marshall (Chicago, Into the Woods), a writing team that includes David Magee (Life of Pi) and songs by Marc Shaiman that cover the wistful (The Places Where Lost Things Go), the merry (Trip a Little Light Fantastic) and the linguistically challenging.
That would be A Cover Is Not the Book, a wonderful reworking of an old aphorism, with lines like: “So the queen of the nation / Made a royal proclamation / To the Missus and the Messieurs / The more or lessers / Bring me all the land’s professors / Then she went to the hairdressers.” It’s great, raucous fun.
The score includes some nice callbacks to the first Mary Poppins, and while the musical numbers are sometimes hit and miss, it’s worth recalling that the original wasn’t all Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. That one included the chortle-worthy I Love to Laugh and the lugubrious A Man Has Dreams.
Blunt captures the odd mix of strictness and fun that made Mary such a memorable character, while Lin-manuel Miranda makes a rare big-screen appearance as Jack the lamplighter, Jane’s chaste love interest and Mary’s foil.
So basically Dick Van Dyke with a less egregious accent.
And yes, that’s just one more way this charming sequel steals shamelessly from its predecessor: Van Dyke also returns, spry as ever at 92 (while filming — he’s since turned 93).
But given that 54 years have passed, the statute of limitations on egregious reboots is long past. I’d be perfectly happy to see Mary Poppins III be the summer blockbuster of 2072, provided Guardians the Galaxy XXI doesn’t take over all the screens that are still above sea level. For the time being, whether you have fond memories of the first one or are asking “Mary Who?” this return engagement should provide a jolly holiday.