Mary Poppins Returns (Rob Marshall)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5028340/) / Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Poppins_Returns)

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[Henry Gale]

Remind me to never get my hopes up for a Rob Marshall movie ever again (something I probably also said after Into the Woods)..

This man consistently manages to make movie musicals feel like feature-length versions of those haphazardly cut commercials for touring companies of broadway shows coming soon to your region. How he managed to make this feel like it was made for such a fraction of its ($130 million?!!) budget is beyond me. Just in basic visual choices, even when the camera may find itself nicely placed in the midst of the set, the shot will consistently be lensed and framed too tightly or feel un-dynamic in its angle or movement, and then the length of that shot will probably also be too short in the final edit for you to properly grasp and immerse yourself in what's presented. I felt like I was watching a pan-and-scan cropped version of a movie edited down for TV, despite watching it in 2.35:1 in its theatrical release.

I lament the version of this movie made by a director with simply enough vision to not make every scene feel like it was shot in the back corner of a soundstage or a borrowed outdoor set from another production who had their shit better together. I understand why Marshall gets to make things like this, having made Chicago and a bunch of well-received, financially successful movies for Disney in particular, but if they can pluck filmmakers from relative indie obscurity to make Marvel movies these days, they can absolutely take more interesting chances on directors than the guy who made Nine. At least with Chicago and Into the Woods there was strong enough material in the basic fabric of it that could stand up to his mistreatment of them, here he's been with it throughout its development and writing, and as if everything else he's ever done hasn't already proved this: He's no Fosse or Sondheim.

There's no sequence that better sums up both the missed opportunities and general ineptitude of this movie than the Meryl Streep sequence. Mary, the kids and Cockney Lin Manuel-Miranda make a right at Sweeney Todd's Fleet Street and turn into Diagon Alley, where they find a small door that leads to maybe the most impressive piece of production design in the film, a twisty, turny antique shop of sparse but beautiful elements, revealing that [gasp!] Meryl Streep lives there! The set turns a full 180 degrees, and you have an actress with no shortage of presence and fearlessness to understandably begin feel hope that the movie would take an exciting new direction with this potentially gorgeously wacky musical sequence. But then you quickly realize that the song (the message being: "Try looking at things differently", which is the premise of at least three other songs in it) is a gaudy drag, and the bit of plot that brought them there in the first place is going to serve no purpose (spoiler: they never go back to that broken bowl or Streep's character), ultimately amounting to the feeling that if it wasn't a sequence that looked as painstakingly (practically) crafted as it is and didn't have Meryl Streep's only screentime at the center of it, that in any other movie it would've obviously been the first sequence to be cut.

And speaking of the music, as much as I hypothetically appreciate the ambition/restraint of the film not reaching into the original film's songbook for even a reprise callback, that choice becomes such a slog because of just how dull all of these new songs are. Even the "best" ones have next to no chance of becoming iconic because of just how lyrically and melodically unremarkable they are. Someone may remember how the scenes looked and how they made them feel, for better or worse, but in any case I doubt they'll actually remember how the song actually went before revisiting the soundtrack (assuming you'd want to do such a thing).

The only element of the film that kept consistently nudging me to be more into it all was Emily Blunt, with her effortless magnetism and charm, even if in the way her performance is presented, she feels a bit more sarcastic with almost a put-on artifice that doesn't match the sincerity of most of what surrounds her. Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer (the most woefully underused) and Julie Walters and the odd actor here and there are all really enjoyable when they are given things to do (while also having one-dimensional mustache twirlers like Colin Firth and Jeremy Swift), and maybe I was just so worn down by the time he appeared, but once Dick Van Dyke's came on screen, it felt like the most emotionally effective and enjoyable bit of the movie, so much so that I was pretty much on-board with it and even moved by everything else until the end. Keep in mind, there was maybe 10 minutes left in it at that point, and the damage was already more than done.

Note: I did see this almost immediately after Lee Chang-dong's Burning, so keep in mind that I was still pretty overwhelmed by that and it was definitely still living in my headspace as I began to watch this, a film that couldn't be more different, both tonally and philosophically. So perhaps if they were the other way around I may have felt differently, but I'm still fairly confident that Burning is one of the best films of this year and Mary Poppins Returns absolutely is not.

[Ivan Drago]

After reading that, I can't help but be curious about why and how this became a Best Picture contender from out of nowhere. It sounds like another Disney cashgrab.

I've also got the #OscarsSoDisney hashtag ready and waiting.

[Ezee E]

After reading that, I can't help but be curious about why and how this became a Best Picture contender from out of nowhere. It sounds like another Disney cashgrab.

I've also got the #OscarsSoDisney hashtag ready and waiting.

I agree about how it came out of nowhere. Just seemed like it's been a pretty weak year for "Oscar-like" movies, so Disney was able to manufacture some momentum from that.

[Spinal]

I've been bitching about Rob Marshall online since Chicago. It's a crying shame that he's been anointed as Hollywood's main interpreter of Broadway musicals because, as Henry mentions, he always somehow manages to make things seem utterly undynamic.

[Ivan Drago]

I've been bitching about Rob Marshall online since Chicago. It's a crying shame that he's been anointed as Hollywood's main interpreter of Broadway musicals because, as Henry mentions, he always somehow manages to make things seem utterly undynamic.

It's looking like that mantle is being passed to Tom Hooper and his damn off-center closeups now.

[Ivan Drago]

I agree about how it came out of nowhere. Just seemed like it's been a pretty weak year for "Oscar-like" movies, so Disney was able to manufacture some momentum from that.

With The Weinstein Company extinct, someone has to keep the period drama alive, I guess? A lot of the critics are saying it's a 'delight' and 'what we need right now', but you could say the same thing about Paddington 2.

[Skitch]

I have so little interest in this. And I dont hate Mary Poppins.

[Ezee E]

If I had kids, I'd be all about bringing them to Mary Poppins.

[Gizmo]

We're supposed to be seeing this as our family Christmas movie day next week. Not sure I'm excited about that. I've always been pretty meh on Mary Poppins. At least it's not one of the bazillion live action remakes, and actually newish content.

[Mr. McGibblets]

I'm not really surprised because Into the Woods looked it was filmed by someone who had seen the play and had no imagination to add visuals to it. I was hoping that the music at least would be good.

[Pop Trash]

S'ok. I can't tell if it's my long standing aversion to the forced whimsy and sentimentality of Disney live-action movies going back to watching Swiss Family Robinson and the like in elementary school... or the movie just isn't that great. Probably a little of column A) and a little of column B).

Costumes and sets are nice.

Blunt smokes the title character. Everyone else is fair to middling. Meryl Streep's scene is a major groaner complete with her doing a "wacky" accent. I guess Lin-Manuel Miranda is a thing now so we'll have to put up with him for a few years. Meh.

[Ivan Drago]

It's no secret that I’m a cynic for all things Disney given the last couple years of news around them. That being said, I liked this more than I thought I would. It's fluff that feels stagey at times thanks to uneven direction, but when the musical numbers feel as cinematic as they do in Imagine That and Nowhere To Go But Up, they hit. I also thought they were taking the story down a fresh direction where Mary Poppins helps the Banks family cope after they've lost their home, but then the climax happened. Also, it's been years since I saw it, but did Mary Poppins leaving at the end of the first movie have more emotional weight to it? It might just be me, but Mary Poppins got a superhero ending by today's standards. That said, if Emily Blunt gets nominated for Best Actress, she'll have earned it because her tremendous performance carries the movie from beginning to end.

[[ETM]]

I guess Lin-Manuel Miranda is a thing now so we'll have to put up with him for a few years.

May we put up with him for more than a few.

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[Morris Schæffer]

S'ok. I can't tell if it's my long standing aversion to the forced whimsy and sentimentality of Disney live-action movies going back to watching Swiss Family Robinson and the like in elementary school... or the movie just isn't that great. Probably a little of column A) and a little of column B).

Costumes and sets are nice.

Blunt smokes the title character. Everyone else is fair to middling. Meryl Streep's scene is a major groaner complete with her doing a "wacky" accent. I guess Lin-Manuel Miranda is a thing now so we'll have to put up with him for a few years. Meh.

Now, dude, Swiss family Robinson is bloody amazing. Same for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to name just one other random example.

Mary Poppins Returns I saw yesterday, but it was my girlfriend's choice. It was ok, I certainly had a bit of a smile at the end, but overall it became this sugary onslaught of optimism and dance numbers that the very reason the movie started, that they were going to lose the house, that they were in a dire situation, just got pushed to the background, only to momentarily liven up when Whishaw got to yell at his kids. Seems the movie could have been more effective had the direness of their predicament been more front and center. Whishaw's transformation for instance just didn't work at all for me.

Really liked the cameo's by Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury.

I never saw the 1964 original.

[Pop Trash]

I was mostly reacting to baby boomer teachers forcing their nostalgia on me back in the 80s and 90s. I wanted to watch Indiana Jones or Batman or something.

[Peng]

January was a very busy month for me, life-wise and film-wise, but it is probably telling that I forgot to log this until now.

This really needs a more imaginative director and a couple of rewrites to turn a lot of good elements into a genuinely charming whole. My still-lingering, overwhelming impression from it though is that Blunt is so good in this (especially, those brief flashes of sadness (regret? resignment?) in her facial expression are breathtaking) that I wish she is given more to do than what the too-busy plot has accommodated her. 5.5/10