Mary Poppins Returns is CGI on overload. Special Effects cranked up to 11. But they are very good special effects and very good computer generated graphics. But I didn’t love Mary Poppins Returns.
We open with a song and there will be plenty of song and dance to follow. Soon enough Mary Poppins shows up to help Michael’s children in a moment of crisis. A villain in the piece is the Bank Manager, who wants the Banks house so he can sell it and add a few more pounds to the coffers.
The original Mary Poppins was the last of the silver age of Walt Disney films. What followed was thirty years of unbelievably bad films that still managed to keep the doors open because they were cranking them out at the rate of almost one a month. Disney still makes a lot of bad films, but they also make ungodly amounts of money.
Mary Poppins Returns is rate PG because, well, no one, not even Disney, can stand the horror of releasing a film with a G rating. There were a couple of things that struck me as out of place for a sequel to Mary Poppins. There is a racy song and dance number where Mary and Jack-the new Bert-sing about judging a book by its cover. Mary sports a flapper look and sings about wearing nothing but a smile. It was a song that seemed a bit out of place.
While this is going on, we met another villain in the tale. An animated bad guy that steals all the Banks possessions. This is also odd. If we assume that cartoon universe is created by Mary Poppins, why would she include bad guys among the fun and games?
The cameos at the end are great. Fun to see Dick Van Dyke looking pretty much exactly the same as he did when he played an old man fifty years ago. I have to wonder if they offered the balloon woman role to Julie Andrews before they offered it to Angela Lansbury.
The nonsense with Chimney Sweeps being replaced by Lamp Lighters seems silly. The story is set in the 1930s or there abouts. Was there still an army of Leeries roaming the streets of London at this time? They are basically the same random group of singing and dancing black clad men from the original story, only now they ride bikes as well as hop from rooftop to rooftop.
It lacked the heart and joy of the original film, but then, I never read the Mary Poppins books by P.L. Travers, so this might be closer to the author’s vision. Mary Poppins Returns was good, just not great.
