Mary Poppins Returns 2018
I wonder a lot of times how hard it is to recognize a classic. The original Mary Poppins is certainly a classic, but I wasn’t that crazy about even when I knew it was a classic. There wasn’t much of a story in the original, most of the characters were weak, and it felt kind of low budget. However it had some great music and some impressive dance numbers and a neat mixture of live action and animation in parts. In this sequel the boy in that movie is grown up with kids of his own (and his wife dead because it is a Disney movie) but is on the verge of losing the family house during the Depression in London. Mary Poppins returns and while she hasn’t aged, she now looks like Emily Blunt. I’ve never been crazy about Blunt and I have never thought of her as a singer, but it seems like she does a pretty good job here, though she can’t really fill Julie Andrews’ red shoes. The rest of the cast is better than in the first movie, but their parts are pretty thin. There are still a lot of songs (destined to be classics? who knows?) and some big dance numbers and a big animated sequence. All of this definitely recalls the original while not repeating it, and often improving the execution (no fake birds to sing to here).
The basic plot is about as lame as it could be, but the set pieces are good and there is some pretty good imagination at work in those. One major plot reveal was a little too obvious though my brother didn’t notice it. Lin Manuel Miranda, who is the “it” guy in musicals right now, was solid, and having Chicago director Rob Marshall direct adds some credibility though he will get less acclaim for this. In the end, it probably gets a B, close to a B-, from me which is what I gave the original a year or so ago when I reviewed it. I can see some people loving it and some people hating it, but it is decent entertainment.
Written: 05 Jan 2019
Owned on: Blu-ray