Magical Christmas Double Feature - Mary Poppins & Mary Poppins Returns

Merry Christmas! Once again, my original plans fell through...but this time, there's no scrambling for reviews. I saw the currently-in-theaters sequel to Mary Poppins in theaters with my sister this afternoon and decided that it was the perfect opportunity to revisit the original film as well. After all, Christmas is a time to reconnect with old friends and family as well as new ones. Oh, and if you haven't seen Mary Poppins Returns yet, you might want to wait until you see it to read the second review, as there will be spoilers. Now that we've gotten the warning out of the way, let's return to London, this time to #17 Cherry Tree Lane in 1910, just in time to witness a bit of chaos in the Banks family...

Mary Poppins
Disney, 1964
Starring Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, and Glynis Johns
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Music and Lyrics by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman

The Story: There's a bit of a row on Cherry Tree Lane. Jane (Karen Dotrice) and Michael (Matthew Garber) Banks have run off, and their Katie Nana (Elsa Lanchester) is quite tired of their antics and quits. After a local constable (Arthur Treacher) retrieves them, their stuffy banker father George (Tomlinson) decides to find them a new nanny. The kids have their own ideas and write an ad. Their mother Winifred (Johns) thinks it's sweet, but her husband insists that it's nonsense and throws it away. It manages to reform and end up in the clouds anyway.

The last person Mr. Banks expects to see at the door is Mary Poppins (Andrews), a stern but attractive young woman who takes firm command of the family the moment she enters. It seems that, despite her protests, "practically perfect" Mary can do all kinds of magic, from pulling an entire household out of her carpet bag to taking the kids into an animated chalk drawing with her chimney sweep friend Bert (Van Dyke). She even takes them to visit Bert's Uncle Albert (Ed Wynn), who flies when he laughs too hard.

Their father is aghast at all this lunacy and insists that a trip to the bank where he works is just the thing to return them to earth. The trip turns into a disaster and ends with the kids running out again. It takes a dance on the rooftop and the loss of his job for Mr. Banks to finally understand what Mary and Bert are trying to tell him...that his family means more to him than any bank job.

The Animation: The effects that blend live-action and animation are downright amazing for 1964, and still look good to this day. I've always especially loved the sequence with Bert dancing with the penguin waiters in unison. The animation itself, with the sketchy style of Disney at the time, is just ok, but the interaction between the actors and the animated characters still mostly works very well.

The Song and Dance: While coming off as a bit softer than the books, Andrews is still a wonderful Mary, especially during the animated sequence. Accent aside, Van Dyke more than matches her as energetic and lovable Bert. Tomlinson and Johns also do well as the Banks parents, who eventually discover just how important their children are, and Dotrice and Garber as fine as the kids.

One of my favorite parts of this are the beloved character actors who pop up in small parts. Along with Treacher, there's Reginald Owen as the ship-shape Admiral Boom and Jane Darwell in a cameo as the bird woman. The costumes and sets are also excellent, ably recreating the slightly grimy London of 1910.

Favorite Number: "Chim Chim Cheree" won the Oscar and "Supercalafragilisticexpealidotious" and "Jolly Holiday" are fun dance routines in the animated sequence, but for my money, the best numbers in this movie are the two slow songs. "Feed the Birds" is absolutely gorgeous, possibly the Sherman Brothers' best ballad. The sweet counter-psychology lullaby "Stay Awake" is almost as lovely. There's also the big ensemble number "Step In Time," with Bert and his buddies kicking up their heels all over the roof...only to be outdone by Mary.

Trivia: It took 20 years for Walt Disney to convince author PL Travers to let him make this movie, and she did indeed get script approval. She was one of the only people who disliked the film when it came out, and in fact was so offended by it, she wouldn't let anyone - including Disney - touch her books again until after she died.

That was David Tomlinson as the voice of Mary's talking parrot umbrella. Julie Andrews was the whistling robin in "A Spoonful of Sugar" and the female pearly singer in the animated sequence.

A stage musical version debuted in London's West End in 2004. It was a hit there and later on Broadway in 2006, and it sounds like a revival is gearing up for the West End next fall.

What I Don't Like: A lot of people complain about Dick Van Dyke's Cockney accent, but at least he tried for one. Ed Wynn just sounds like himself. While the animated sequence has dated pretty well, some of the other effects are a bit obvious today, including Mary Poppins coming and going. And yes, it is softened from the books. The stage musical and the sequel (see below) make more use of the darker edges in the book series.

The Big Finale: It may not be "practically perfect in every way," but it is still a lot of fun for families and fans of fantasy-oriented musicals or Andrews and Van Dyke

Home Media:  I have the 45th anniversary 2-disc DVD set from 2009, but it was upgraded in 2013 to the 50th anniversary on Blu-Ray, and it can be found for streaming as well.

DVD
Blu-Ray
Amazon Prime (buy only)

Mary Poppins Returns
Disney, 2018
Starring Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, and Emily Mortimer
Directed by Ken Marshall
Music by Marc Shaiman; Lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman

The Story: It's now 1935, and Cherry Tree Lane is once again in chaos. Michael Banks (Whishaw) still lives in the family home with his three children Annabelle (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanel Saleh), and George (Joel Dawson). He was an artist, but after his wife Kate died, he gave up painting and got a job at the bank where his father once worked. Kate apparently took care of most things for the family, including the finances. He took out a loan on the house, and now William "Weatherall" Wilikins (Colin Firth), the nephew of original bank owner Mr. Dawes (Dick Van Dyke),  wants to reposes it. His sister Jane, an activist and social worker, helps him take care of the children but has even less money. If they can't find stocks that Mr. Banks owned and sell them, they'll lose the house.

Mary Poppins (Blunt) literally blows in on the end of a kite. Jane and Michael have no problems welcoming her back. Jack (Miranda), a cheerful lamplighter and Bert's apprentice, is even happier to see her. The current Banks children are less pleased. They insist that they can take care of themselves and have no need of a nanny. Mary shows them otherwise when she takes them on an adventure during their baths, on a romp in a china bowl that turns into a nightmare, and into the bowels of London to visit her cousin Topsy (Meryl Streep), whose life is literally turned upside-down. She and Jack finally prove to the kids and their father and aunt that sometimes, all you need to do is look at life in a different way.

The Animation: Some of the biggest praise for the movie has been how they managed to match the animation up with the original, right down to it being 2D, rather than computer. I like how they managed to make it look like an actual porcelain bowl, including all the details on the humans' costumes being painted on, rather than real flounces and buttons and such.

The Song and Dance: Blunt makes a practically perfect Mary Poppins, maybe even better than Andrews. While she can still be kind, she's also vain and a bit of a snob, as per the original books. Miranda's having a ball as Jack, and Whishaw and Mortimer are adorable as the older Bankses. Look for some fun cameos from Van Dyke and Angela Landsbury in the finale. Firth makes an appropriately smarmy villain as well.

The scenery and costumes are just as gorgeous as the original. Everyone talks about the sequence in the china bowl, but my favorite sequence was their swimming adventure in the bathtub. The underwater effects in that sequence are incredible - and seem to be mostly done with the same 2D animation.

Favorite Number: Ironically, once again, the best song was a ballad, the touching "The Place Where Lost Things Go." (Having lost my own stepfather in October, I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried during the end of that song.) Miranda and his fellow lamplighters have a blast with the ensemble number "Trip a Little Light Fantastic." "Can You Imagine That?", the swimming sequence, and Mary and Jack's music-hall duet "A Cover Is Not a Book" are also a lot of fun.

What I Don't Like: Most critics have complained that it feels too much like a retread of the original. I thought it had enough twists and turns to avoid deja vu, but there was a lot of overlap - an animated sequence, Mary comes in after a kite flies, her buddy is a jack-of-all-trades menial worker with a bad Cockney accent, there's a big number with her and his friends and another one with a character actor known for their eccentric roles, an elderly banker ends up swooping in to save everything in the end.

The save the house plot did make for a bit more excitement than the original...but it also felt like it was trying a little too hard to be an action movie. As nifty as the finale on Big Ben was, it does feel like it loses the simplicity of the original.

The Big Finale: I'll have to see how I feel when it comes out on home media, but for now, I absolutely loved Mary Poppins Returns. The delightful performances, music, animation, and production design more than offset the complaints about the rehashed script. I highly recommend grabbing the kids or any friends who are musical fans and getting to the theater as soon as possible.

Home Media: The soundtrack can currently be found on CD and for streaming on Amazon and elsewhere.

CD
Amazon Music Unlimited