Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Poppins Returns (2018) is set twenty five years after the first film, with the Banks children grown. Michael Banks is an adult now; he has lost his wife, has three children, and is about to lose the house over a bank loan. His sister Jane tries to help. Then Mary Poppins comes down out of the sky and explains nothing. The film deliberately repeats the first one's structure: a bath scene, an animated sequence, a rooftop number, an outing to the park. The same skeleton with different scenes. The most notable passage is the hand drawn animation. Disney had closed its hand drawn division years earlier; some of the old animators were brought back and that sequence was made the traditional way. Dick Van Dyke played two parts in the first film. He returns here at ninety two and dances on a desk. It was done in one take. Angela Lansbury and Meryl Streep each have a sequence. Emily Blunt did not try to resemble Julie Andrews; she went back to the Mary Poppins of the books, who is colder and vainer. Lin-Manuel Miranda plays the lamplighter. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman wrote the songs and it took four Oscar nominations. It did well commercially without displacing the first film; the most common criticism is that the songs do not stay with you. It runs 130 minutes. Good for: musicals, family film, and classic Disney. Less good for: the structure is too familiar and it runs long.