Movie Review: Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Poppins Returns *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Rob Marshall.

Written by: David Magee & Rob Marshall & John DeLuca based upon the stories by P.L. Travers.

Starring: Emily Blunt (Mary Poppins), Lin-Manuel Miranda (Jack), Meryl Streep (Topsy), Angela Lansbury (Balloon Lady), Emily Mortimer (Jane Banks), Colin Firth (William Weatherall Wilkins), Julie Walters (Ellen), Ben Whishaw (Michael Banks), Dick Van Dyke (Mr. Dawes Jr.), David Warner (Admiral Boom), Pixie Davies (Anabel Banks), Jim Norton (Mr. Binnacle), Jeremy Swift (Gooding), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Frye / Weasel), Joel Dawson (Georgie Banks), Nathanael Saleh (John Banks).

 

What is most clear about Mary Poppins Returns is that the filmmakers clearly love the original Mary Poppins. They do a meticulous job of recreating the look and feel of the original film, and pretty much every song in the movie is a response to a song from the original movie. It’s odd then that the one element of the film that is strikingly different to the original film is Emily Blunt’s performance as Poppins herself – who here is chillier than Julie Andrews’ ever was, in a way that both makes her character more interesting that it otherwise would be, and also doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the movie. Strangely though, this doesn’t derail the movie like you would think it would. Instead, it gives an odd tension to the movie that otherwise would not have been there.

 

The basic premise of the plot is that the two Banks children from the first film are all grown up now – Michael (Ben Whishaw) has three adorable children of his own, and is now raising them solo since his wife died within the last year. He is close with his sister, Jane (Emily Mortimer), who is a labor organizer of some sort. Because of a weird loan, the evil head of the bank where their father used to work (Colin Firth) will repossess their house by the end of the week, unless they can find a stock certificate proving they own shares in the bank. This is when Mary Poppins arrives to take care of both generations of Banks children. And it’s also when Jack (Lim-Manuel Miranda), a lamplighter, shows up to just kind of hang out with Mary Poppins and the children because – well, because they need another chipper character who can see.

 

The plot doesn’t really matter. Like the original film, it’s odd that that there’s so much about banking in a children’s movie – especially since it’s also clear that the film is only using the plot as a way to string together musical numbers. The musical numbers in Mary Poppins Returns are an odd assortment of songs – all of which are clearly designed to be a response to the original film. Most of the musical numbers are very well staged by director Rob Marshall – none of them rise to the level of his best work in Chicago (mind you, nothing he has done since Chicago has risen to the level of the best of Chicago) – but they are well handled, mixing animation in when necessary, and coming up with inventive staging for it all. And yet, I have to say other than Trip the Light Fantastic and The Cover is Not the Book- I have pretty much forgotten all the songs themselves in the days since the movie (and those are marginal). The music in the film is merely adequate – and little else.

 

There is a lot I liked about the film though. The production and costume design is excellent, and the filmmakers clearly worked long and hard on setting up the visuals of the film to look like the original – something I very much appreciated. I also quite liked Emily Blunt’s performance. She clearly had the highest bar to clear in the film – no one else is really playing a character we remember that well from the first film, and there are few characters more iconic than Mary Poppins. I liked what she did here – she is colder than Andrews, more prim and proper. There is also a strange air of sadness to her – she seems to be a magical character who exists only to keep teaching people the same lessons again and again, and she is getting tired of it. Blunt can sing and dance with the best of them – and does so here – but there is something in the quieter scenes that’s rather sad about her character.

 

Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. I do think that well I appreciated the effort that went into recreating the original look of the film, I think somewhere along the way, they perhaps became too slavishly devoted to the film. There is a sense that the film is a little airless – as it’s so packed with references and nods to the original that it never becomes something unto itself – expect in Blunt’s performance. It gets the job done – it held the attention of my 7 and 4-year-old daughters for more than 2 hours (quite an accomplishment for the 4-year-old). Yet, I don’t know if ultimately it will end up being more than a footnote to the original.