Film of the Week: Mary Poppins Returns

This is a difficult one. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Mary Poppins Returns is noticeably different from the first film. Aside from the main change, and most obvious is now Emily Blunt plays the character. Julie Andrews doesn’t even make a cameo as she felt that her appearance would overshadow Emily’s. A quick glimpse of someone who once played probably one of the most iconic characters in many people’s childhood, would undoubtedly make the same people talk about that cameo. Articles would be written detailing trying to dissect what her cameo “actually meant” when in actuality it was just a simple cameo not meant as anything other than that – so I do understand why Julie decided to step aside and let Emily take the show forward.

Emily has confirmed she dived deep into P.L. Travers books and discovered the character in the original was nothing like the character in the film, which explains the authors strong hesitation to not let Disney take the rights, a subject which the film, Saving Mr. Banks detailed. Emily Blunt based her performance on the character as an homage to the real character in the book. There is a hint of coldness in her personality, a strong sense of will, but never truly embracing what the character really is, because people would pick up on that immediately. Emily’s portrayal of the character was a mix of the two – the Mary we saw in the original, and the Mary in the books.

But, does it work? That’s the big question. Well (and this is coming from someone who has seen the original multiple times, and has since learnt the truth about Disney’s relationship with P.L. Travers), it works only if you haven’t seen the original. This isn’t me being a cynical old person, if I had to choose between the original and this one, I would choose the original. If asked why, I wouldn’t necessarily have an answer ready, just say something along the lines of, “I just do, it’s what I grew up with.” That’s why I opened this article stating this one will be difficult; I’m naturally going to make comparisons.

If I were as young as I was when I first watched Mary Poppins, sitting down to watch Mary Poppins Returns, I would enjoy it. It has the right level of quirkiness, the right level of magic and emotion between each character – it has the morals, and it has plenty of homages to the original for us who know of the original. Parents can sit down with the children and enjoy seeing the sailor who blows his cannon on the hour every hour, making the Bank’s house shake, the chimney sweepers coming out to dance, the hand drawn animation – which the director, Rob Marshall fought valiantly and with passion to make happen. Disney was adamant to continue with the computer animation they’ve ditched hand drawn animation for. They had to pull animators out of retirement to make that sequence happen, and I’m happy Disney relented and gave into Rob’s insistence.

The film is drenched with nostalgia, and the future. For children, there’s no nostalgia, and there is no future, they see the film for what it is, a film about a magic nanny coming down and having fun with those who need to re-learn what fun truly is. And that’s why the original overpowers the sequel for me at least.

Seeing the sailor atop the building, firing his cannon, seeing the chimney sweepers dancing, seeing the animation sequence, hearing the songs the characters sing – unfortunately, as much as I did enjoy this film, afterward, all I felt like doing is going back and reliving the original again. You can’t recreate a classic song the chimney sweepers sing in the original, so they cleverly don’t, but then they include them riding on bikes and doing tricks alongside them dancing with their sweepers – it didn’t need tweaking. None of the songs unfortunately stood out as much as some of the original’s did, the only one I remember from Mary Poppins Returns is sung by the chimney sweeper, about the London’s sky, but that’s only because he sings sections of it throughout the film, of course I’m going to remember it.

It was an absolute joy to see Dick Van Dyke back dancing again, and hearing how he did all his own dancing at the incredible age of 92 just blows my mind – but seeing him dance in that movie made me want to go and see him dance in the original movie.

So, in conclusion – we have a constant rotatory state of confliction. We have the parents sitting down to watch Mary Poppins Returns with their child, and it not clicking as well as they were probably hoping it would (you could argue that they unintentionally hyped themselves up too much, which is understandable), but when they sit down and watch the original with their child, who probably haven’t seen it before, the mood switches and the parents are liking it more than the child. From the child’s eyes, the original looks old and less crisp, because the sequel was the first they saw first, then the original older version is not going to click with them either.

As I said, this article was a difficult one to write. I didn’t want to sound as if I was complaining about how they were making a sequel to something that didn’t need a sequel, or an old person who wishes they stopped trying to get rid of the old classics. I wanted to justify why, in my humble opinion, the original clicked with me more than the sequel.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)