Mary Poppins Returns is a 2018 fantasy set decades after her original visit, where the magical nanny returns to help the Banks siblings and Michael’s children through a difficult time in their lives.
I suppose at 54 years in the waiting, the sequel to one of the most beloved films in cinema history is out of time in more ways than one. Maybe modern audiences just don’t have the patience for what Disney and director Rob Marshall attempt with their efforts, the lengthy run time and old school pacing testing a more hyperset of eyes than those of their grandparents. Taking ‘return’ to mean far more than Mary herself, the filmmakers work hard to recall the classic Disney storytelling style of the 1960s, with truly praiseworthy results, though it’s easy to see why many were divided when this released. However, there is magic in this movie and seen with the right eyes is as fun to believe as it was so many years ago.
The story is set some twenty-five years after the events of the first film. It’s the 1930s, and we’re back in the Banks’ house in London, Michael (Ben Whishaw) grown and with three children of his own, Annabel (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanael Saleh), and Georgie (Joel Dawson), all living in the home he grew up in. Tragedy has struck though, his wife suddenly passed on, leaving him alone to raise the family. His sister Jane (Emily Mortimer) helps out but it’s not enough, he three months late on his mortgage and the bank coming to repossess.
Along comes Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt), who arrives one blustery day, as she typically does, and takes up residence again, feeling the kids are in proper need of a nanny. Naturally, Mary takes the children on fantastical adventures with the local lamplighter Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda) tagging along. Meanwhile, Michael struggles to prove his value to the bank, a missing share certificate a possible way to do so, but where is it?
It’s not really possible to say much about Mary Poppins Returns without all roads leading to Blunt, who is in no uncertain terms, remarkable as the titular nanny. If you’ve ever seen the original, and surely you have if you’ve come this far, that’s high praise, the legendary Julie Andrews as the first Mary Poppins so well cast, the thought of doing any movie with Poppins in the title without her close to sacreligious. She so …. well … magically embodied the wonder of Mary on screen, even decades later, she is a marvel to watch. To have anyone even think of giving it a spin on their own must have been a harrowing decision … for a lot of people.
Either way, Blunt dons the name with astonishing confidence, the moment she puts her foot on the ground and utters her first words, you get what she’s going for, a kind of homage that deeply respects Andrews’ work while instantly claiming ground for a whole new generation. You can’t help but compare, since the movie insists the characters are the same person, but you are never not aware of the differences, which leads to this kind of momentary trade-off if you’re any fan of Andrews. You run a quick list through your mind of everything you loved about her performance and start stacking it up against Blunt, but what’s really good about what Blunt does is that in just a matter of minutes, you’re totally on board. She’s simply too much fun and so effortlessly absorbs the Poppins persona into every move she makes, you can’t help but feel happy. She is Mary Poppins.
I think a lot of that is because I am a fan of the first film, a very imaginative film that mixed animation and live action. You surely have to be to appreciate what Mary Poppins Returns is doing, taking the same aesthetics made famous in 1964 and giving it a 2019 spin. It works. It works very well. Of course, let’s not dismiss the rest of the film’s supporting cast, including the iconic Dick Van Dyke, who has a small part (having starred in the first). They populate the movie with great attention to the designs and tone of their counterparts. But no matter how much we celebrate them, this is all Blunt. Watch how she so fluidly fills the screen with charm and warmth, the way she lets a smile change everything about the momentum of a moment. It’s disarming and for any who can’t see how deeply the filmmakers labored to honor the work of Andrews, her director Robert Stevenson, and Walt Disney himself, watch this again and turn back the clock in your minds, letting this be something new born from the old that is exactly what it hopes to be. Pure, imaginative joy.