Some movies exist purely to bring joy to its audience; to ensure that they walk out of the theater with a smile on their faces and their spirits lifted. “Mary Poppins Returns” is one of those films.
The film tells the story of grown up Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane Banks (Emily Mortimer). Michael is a fairly recent widower living with his three children in his childhood home. Jane frequently visits to give Michael a helping hand with his children. Times are tough, which forces the younger Banks generation to grow up far quicker than they should.
Enter Mary Poppins.
As the youngest Banks, Georgie, gleefully proclaims to his father, “I was flying a kite and it got caught on a nanny!” That nanny is played this time around by Emily Blunt. It’s a hard thing to live up to a legend like Julie Andrews, who originated the role on screen in the 1964 film. Blunt is up to the challenge. She plays the legendary nanny with a dry wit and a knowing gleam in her eye. The lamp lighter to Blunt’s Mary Poppin is Jack, played by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The role of Jack would be ultimately forgetful, if it weren’t filled by someone as effortlessly charming as Miranda. As this is his biggest film role to date, he clearly finds a boyish delight in each moment on screen.
Blunt and Miranda bring joyful energy to the film’s song and dance numbers. Each tune washes over the audience with a sweet wave of nostalgia. The highlight of these numbers would the trademark animated sequences, harkening back to the first film. Simply put, these scenes are a blast, namely the one that takes place on the surface of a ceramic bowl. The animation is a nice callback to the ’60s and it’s visually a treat to see our five humans interwoven in their real-life form. Miranda and Blunt share a song and dance number in this sequence, and the pair each radiates pure joy during it.
Now this film isn’t without its faults. The plot is a bit messy. There isn’t much of a cohesive flow between the storyline about Michael trying to save his house and Mary trying to save his children’s childhoods. And let’s not even get started on the completely out-of-nowhere and forced alluded romance between Jane and Jack.
A few performances don’t quite hit the mark as well. Whishaw’s portrayal of grief comes off as a bit hollow and forced. While this may be a cardinal sin to admit in a film review, Meryl Streep’s cameo as Mary’s cousin Topsy feels completely out of place. The film runs a bit long at 2 hours and 10 minutes, so cutting this scene and the minor storyline attached to it would’ve trimmed it down to a more manageable runtime.
But all-in-all, the film is just fun. It’s a movie to bring the kids to so you may prolong the holiday spirit a bit longer, or one to see for its joyful escapism. It’s a film that urges audiences to remember that when things feel like they’re falling apart, there’s nowhere to go but up.
-by Brynne Ramella
