Mary Poppins Returns Brings Back the Childhood Wonder

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Mary Poppins Returns is just a retread of the original Mary Poppins, but it is so earnest that it works. The performances were great, except for some of the acting by the children. The movie is carried by Emily Blunt as Poppins and Lin Manuel Miranda as a lamplighter named Jack. It is actually unfair how talented and charming those two are. They sing and dance and give a terrific homage to the Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke 1964 masterpiece. Van Dyke even had a cameo, but Andrews was too busy voicing a sea monster in Aquaman. Seriously. While Blunt and Miranda performed excellent songs that sounded like a blend of the original Mary Poppins and La La Land, none of them felt that they would be cultural mainstays. I enjoyed every song (except the Meryl Streep song), but none of them will be remembered like Step in Time, Chim-Chim-Cheree, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, A Spoonful of Sugar, or Let’s Go Fly a Kite. Mary Poppins Returns is a lot like another sequel to a masterpiece, Return to Oz. It was a sequel nobody asked for, but still told a deserving story with characters we love and new clever characters. Also, they both had extreme sports for no real reason. Return to Oz had the roller-blading villains and Mary Poppins Returns had BMX lamplighters. Unfortunately, Mary Poppins Returns pales in comparison to its predecessor, but it is still a good movie. It is well constructed, well acted, well paced, and sounds amazing. It is a very good movie in its own right, but it is naturally compared to its namesake, one of the best family movies of all time. I give Mary Poppins Returns 4 out of the 5 Banks children who were under the care of Mary Poppins over the years (everyone except Georgie; I didn’t like his acting).