Look, Mary Poppins Returns is a Mary Poppins movie, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to you if you just read the fucking title of it. There’s a sequence where Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) and Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda) dance with a bunch of animated characters. There’s silly, surreal sequences involving bathtubs and balloons. There’s a lot of singing. There’s a whole big number where a bunch of working class London dudes dance and do some BMX stunts, except this time around they’re “leeries” instead of chimney sweeps. It’s approximately thirty years into the future of the first Mary Poppins, so Michael Banks has his own kids and Jane Banks gets to wear trousers.
Plot-wise, and the plot isn’t terribly complicated because it’s there to hold all the musical numbers together, it’s about Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) trying to save his family house after his wife has died and he’s been bad about keeping up the bills while caring for their three children. It’s during the Great Slump (aka the Great Depression in the UK) so he doesn’t exactly have a lot of job options; he works part-time as a teller for an evil banker played by Colin Firth, who is the same guy who wants to repossess Michael’s house. Mary Poppins shows up to reignite the joy in the family and incidentally help them not lose their home.
It’s like the original Mary Poppins, but a bit more pacey. Lin-Manuel MIranda gets to do a tiny bit of rap, even though he had nothing to do with the lyrics, which we can all breathe a sigh of relief about. I mean, it’s just really nice? And suitable for small children? And very colorful. The costume design was really great, especially what they did during the animated sequence.
Really, it’s all cute wrapping paper for the fact that Mary Poppins is a terrifying eldritch being that descends to earth once a generation, spreads a particular kind of madness around, and then leaves once she is on the receiving end of enough laughter from people whose reality she’s utterly broken. Okay, look:
- She descends to earth from the heavens in a terrifying shadow, one foot cocked up as if about to tap impatiently because it’s been so long since she’s had some delicious mortal souls.
- She spends all of her time taking the kids on strange adventures that, when the children try to describe them later, she tells them that of course these things didn’t happen.
- She bends reality around herself. Mirrors don’t respond properly, etc.
- There’s an entire song she sings (while in the trippy cartoon realm) about not judging a book by its cover. Sure, it’s a warning about Douchebag McBankerface, but more importantly, she’s delivering a winking warning about herself. Don’t judge her by her charming exterior when it’s actually just a flesh bag that contains an unending sea of glittery, chthonic madness.
- At the end of this film, Angela Lansbury gives her a fucking bright red balloon like she’s fucking Pennywise the Clown because JESSICA FLETCHER KNOWS WHAT’S FUCKING UP
But come on, it’s not like any of this is a surprise if you saw the first movie. It’s very consistent. The one thing that isn’t consistent, that’s still bothering the heck out of me, is an almost throw-away line at the end of the film. I guess count it as a SPOILER if you’re really concerned.