Mary Poppins Returns

seen on 28 January 2019

Rob Marshall directs Emily Blunt as the eponymous nanny in a long-awaited - or long-delayed - sequel to the 1964 classic which starred Julie Andrews. There is sterling support from the likes of Lin-Manuel Miranda (Jack the lamplighter) Ben Whishaw (Michael Banks), Emily Mortimer (Jane Banks), Julie Walters (housekeeper Ellen - she seems to 'do' comic housekeepers in children's fantasies having taken an equivalent role in the Paddington movies), Colin Firth (bank manager) and Meryl Streep (Mary Poppins's cousin Topsy), and cameos from Angela Lansbury, David Warner, Chris O'Dowd (voicing an animated character) and Dick van Dyke, the latter being the only obvious front-of-camera participant from the original film, though he does not play the same part. (Several technicians and musicians from the first film are also credited on the sequel.) The new generation of Banks children is represented by the sensible Pixie Davies (Annabel), the practical Nathanael Saleh (John), and the angelic Joel Dawson (George).

The effortless wholesomeness of the original film is hard to recapture in these more knowing days. The production values are high, and the special effects are based on more sophisticated techniques than were available 55 years ago, but the result is often more slick than engaging, and the musical numbers do not match the exuberance of those in the first film, though not for want of trying. It is partly a matter of aspiring to outdo what was so successful before with episodes that are reminiscent of past success and which therefore lack a certain spontaneity - another animation sequence; another cheeky cheerful Londoner to lead the well-bred and well-scrubbed children into a dirtier but still utterly safe London of workers who know their place (lamplighters now rather than chimney sweeps then). 

Emily Blunt looks both smart and attractive as the practically perfect in every way Mary Poppins (PL Travers' conception was markedly more severe, but of course Julie Andrews set the precedent for the screen presence); but her cut-glass accent at times verges on camp, which detracts from her portrayal. Also, the script leeches any possible severity from her regimen as all her refusals turn very quickly into indulgent permissions (not what a nanny should do) and when she agrees to sing in the animated scene she unaccountably turns herself into something of a music hall flapper with a low-class accent.

The film is set during 'the great slump', presumably meaning the late 1920s, plausible enough as the original Mrs Banks had pinned 'Votes for Women' streamers to the children's kite a generation before. It may seem odd, then, that the opening sequence concentrates on a street lamplighter; but apparently there are still some 1500 gas lamps in London even now, so one might indulge the lack of any sign of electrification (or of anxiety about employment on the part of the lamplighters during a 'slump') in the interests of the picturesque. Whether one can extend this forbearance to the idea that Jane Banks (valiantly following her mother by handing out leaflets supporting soup kitchens and the like) would chat almost flirtatiously with even a personable lamplighter in the street; or even more to the idea that the housekeeper would comment indulgently at this lack of social propriety rather than be outraged by it, is another matter. The presence of a coloured 'lawyer' (almost a high-class bailiff in fact) employed by the Bank may seem to be merely a concession to the current trend for colour-blind casting; but here, as with the gas lamps, this is arguably not an anachronism - it looks odd just because we assume that all characters in such films must be white unless explicitly said not to be.

There are undercurrents of real sadness in the film, which rescue it from unadulterated whimsy. Michael Banks's wife, the children's mother, has died and so both he and the children are at a loss, and their predicament is all the more poignant because they are attempting to show the requisite British fortitude of the time. Ben Whishaw is ideal at portraying the sort of vulnerability required, though the script at times lets him down, and the children's eventual reassurances verge n the mawkish. This plot device of course allows his sister Jane to be the only adult female on the scene, thus no threat when Mary Poppins arrives; it also keeps the link to the first film uncomplicated by any need to assuage the doubts of a sceptical mother figure.

The uplifting finale tries to top the joyous flying of kites with the almost ludicrous spectacle of characters holding balloons that whisk them into the air, fatally blurring the line between the children's experience of peculiar events in Mary Poppins's presence and the 'real' world they are supposed to inhabit. It is just too convenient for an indulgent Angela Lansbury (selling the balloons) to remark 'the adults will forget this tomorrow - they always do'. Whether today's audience will be as entranced by all this as an ealrier generation was with the original, is a moot point.