Mary Poppins Returns

Me being who I am, it's interesting that the only version of Mary Poppins with which I'm completely familiar is the first novel. I never saw the film until I caught the last half of it on the TV a year ago, and I've seen the beginning of the stage musical (thank you youtube) and listened to the soundtrack.

Going into Mary Poppins Returns thus means I'm going back to a story that has neither particular nostalgia value nor a whole lot of thematic ressonance for me, because I know it as fragments, mainly musical, and not really as a complete story.

Said story is pretty much a remix of the last one. The Banks Family is mildly dysfunctional, The Bank Is Being Mean, Mary Poppins teaches them to fix things by bringing a healthy dose of insanity into their lives. The music is also pretty much a remix of the last one. There's a new "Jolly Holiday" sequence, a new "Step In Time", a new "Let's Go Fly A Kite". There are, of course, numerous smaller callbacks to the first film. Interestingly, Mary Poppins II also borrows from the stage musical: "Cheery Tree Lane" is a musical motif that pops up a couple of times, and Step In Time 2018 also seems to draw more from the stage version than the sixties film. We can debate the merits of trying to be a new Mary Poppins to the extreme where you're just painting a new layer of varnish over the old story. Somehow, the stage adaptation of the story is far more transformative than the sequel is, and I don't think this is doing the sequel any favours. When it recreates the original piece by piece, it lays itself open to the inevitable comparisons - and it doesn't come out on top.

It's a fun spectacle, but suffering a light case of the La La Land syndrome: A flashy display that is too sleek, too polished, and so becomes forgettable afterwards. La La Land was much worse in this regard, mind, and this film is absolutely fun and charming and more memorable. But where the sixties film (or I mean, at least the half of it that counts) is a masterpiece, this one is merely good enough. Being not-as-good as a masterpiece obviously doesn't mean it's bad. I had fun! Unlike La La Land, I wasn't regretting the money I spent on the ticket and the time I spent on watching it. I'll probably get the two-in-one BD that is sure to be released come autumn, so that I can finally see all of the first film too.

Minor hicups:
- Odd casting choice in the dub (if they're going to use period-accurate forms of polite address that the target audience are fourty years too young to remember in use, they could've used the period-accurate sociolectal differences rather than having Jack speak the only dialect considered so embarassing that people stop speaking it when they move away)

- Super awkward attempt at unncessary romantic subplot. It would've just been annoying if they hadn't made him make Those Eyes at both Mary and Topsy and not, I noted, the woman he holds hands with in the final number. Come on, he obviously likes them at least thirty years older.

- The emotional turning point of the film does not come across as believable. Particularly given the fact that children ARE liars and the world would've been a better place if more parents would acknowledge it. Of course, the fool is me hoping for Disney to acknowledge that the nuclear family isn't by essence a beacon of truth and goodness

- is nineteen thirties London really the right place to belt out an ending moral about how the only way things can go from here on is upwards?