Date: Saturday, December 22 2018
Location: Cinemark Theater in Stroud Mall
Time: 11am
Party: 3 (my mom, sister and I)
Director: Rob Marshall (of Pirates of the Carribean and Into the Woods fame)
Writers: David Magee, Rob Marshall and John DeLuca (screenplay), P.L. Travers (for Mary Poppins book series)
Composer: Marc Shaiman
Notable Cast:
Mary Poppins- Emily Blunt
Jack the Leery- Lin-Manuel Miranda
Michael Banks- Ben Whishaw (Q in the latest Bond films and the voice of Paddington)
Jane Banks- Emily Mortimer (I know her best as the voice of the heroine in "Howl's Moving Castle)
Ellen- Julie Walters (Mrs. Weasley is back!)
Cousin Topsy- Meryl Streep
Wilkins- Colin Firth
Write-up:
Opening Remarks
This is one of those movies we'd been looking forward to all year and for me at least it was worth the wait. My sister says she really liked it, but she wasn't speaking as enthuastically about it as I did afterwards. And my mom thought it was a little too depressing and dragged in places.
The theater was mostly empty when we got there and by the time it started, at least a dozen other people showed up. But it wasn't a terribly enthusiastic audience. The two of me (my sister and I) wanted to cheer and clap after a bunch of the musical numbers, but it was so silent in the theater we were only comfortable softly clapping to ourselves. Nobody even cheered at the end and I felt like this movie warranted that.
Was it as good as the original? No. The original is such a classic and Julie Andrews is so adored in this role that it's hard for anyone to do it that same level of justice. But I thought it was a nice homage to the original film and will help introduce a new generation to it. Hopefully those who hadn't seen the original will do and those who hadn't seen it in years will become more inclined to revisit. I know I will have to... I think the last time I saw it was on TV a couple years ago... they tend to show it this time of year on ABC, which is one of the many apparatuses owned by Disney these days...
Trailers:
...and we're back to the stand-by 7 trailers...
Breakthrough- this movie brought me in immediately on the fact the mom is being played by Kate from "This is Us"- it's based on a true story where a teenage boy is playing with his friends and falls through the ice and faith alone is helping to keep him alive. Looks like a bit of a tearjerker (well, obviously) but it looks like it'll be a good movie overall
Detective Pikachu- the first time my sister is seeing the trailer and I'm not even sure what she thinks of it. I know she asked for (and got) the game for Christmas and has watched the walkthrough on YouTube a number of times already.
A Dog's Way Home- my sister run out of the theater so she didn't have to see the trailer again... we love dogs, but we hate dog movies because they're ALWAYS tearjerkers. And the dog almost always dies at the end.
The Secret Life of Pets 2- I still hadn't seen the first one and it's been on TV a bit over the last week (let's just say we have other plans so we keep missing it). This one is another teaser, this time about the cat trying to wake up its owner and the one thing that does is her hacking up a hairball. Then after the title, she's on the sofa dealing with catnip and talking to the little white dog
Where'd You Go, Bernadette?- I'm not quite sure where this movie is even going, honestly... it's about a mom who suddenly has this urge to do something and just disappears and I guess it's about finding her... I really can't make heads or tails of it.
Dumbo- after a bunch of teasers, I think this is the first proper trailer we've gotten of this movie. I'd seen the original maybe once and it was years ago. And it's a pretty rough movie to get through... I still don't quite like the fact that this movie revolves around the people trying to take care of Dumbo and make him a star to help save the circus, when in the animated version the humans are the bad guys that took away Dumbo's mom because she was hurting people (they started it- stupid kids teasing poor Dumbo)... it looks like in this version Danny Devito is the ringmaster and there is some homage to the pink elephants scene, although I don't know if it'll be a full song and dance number... I remember Nostaglia Critic naming that scene one of his top 11 nostaglic mindf**ks cuz it's one of those things that doesn't make sense when you're a kid and there's usually drugs involved.
The Lion King- omg, cannot wait for this one... and also can't wait to get more than just a teaser trailer of this cuz it looks like it's gonna be AMAZING. The one thing they've got right for sure is James Earl Jones as Mufasa. Nobody can top that.
So I made a note on my phone, where I record all these trailers for these posts...there are 7 and I don't write the post for a couple days after... it'll be too easy to forget if I don't write them down... this was 17 minutes of previews... and the movie time is slated for 11... the movie itself should START at 11, not the trailers and millions of commercials... if I wanted to see commercials, I would have stayed home :sigh:
Ok, moving on...
The Main Event
One thing before the movie starts, we get a greeting from Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda to thank us for seeing the movie, to enjoy it and have a good holiday. I thought that was kind of a nice touch.
The opening is pretty nice where we see a lot of paintings of scenes from the movie as the overture plays with all the songs to come in the movie.
It should be noted that all of the songs are brand new, no encores from the first movie, but certainly a bunch of references to the original.
The bad news first- the movie starts with a bit of a double-whammy... the second generation of Banks children (Michael's children) lost their mom a year ago and now the bank is threatening to repossess their house unless they can play the loan in full. And for the adults, grown-up Jane and Michael (the kids from the original movie), their quest is to find the certificate that their father owned shares in the bank. And the three children, Anabel, John and Georgie want to help as well. But then Mary Poppins shows up and her job is to help them to remember how to be kids... because they'd done so much growing up after their mom passed away.
It's a Disney tradition that we've all gotten pretty sick of at this point... the moms are always dead or die in these movies... seriously, what the hell... but on the other hand, if they were going to do the widower angle, they did play it right. The big issue with the house is that Michael's wife took care of all the finances and he's not sure how to take over. Now, had they gone the other way and said it was Jane's children and her husband had passed away, it'd be more typical... the husband doing the finances and the wife not knowing what to do about them... this kinda paints the deceased Mrs. Banks in a strong female role and it certainly shows how times have changed.
The songs weren't quite as memorable as "A Spoon Full of Sugar," "Feed the Birds" or "Let's Go Fly a Kite"... but they had that same sense of fun and feel like they come from the same songbook. A number of the scenes do harken back to the original. And of course the characters do as well.
Best place to start is the Leeries- the people in London who light the streetlamps at night and snuff them out in the morning. They fulfill the role the chimney sweeps do in the original movie. Their song about tripping the "Light Fantastic" may not be "Chim-Chim-erie" but it lends itself to the Leeries doing an outrageously fun dance number including bike tricks and parkour.
Of course a lot of people complained back in the day about how bad a Cockney accent Dick Van Dyke did for Bert the Chimney Sweep and the accent Lin-Manuel Miranda does is sorta in line with that. Then again, I've never been to that part of London so I can't judge what is or isn't a good Cockney accent. (Being a part of "My Fair Lady" in high school certainly doesn't make me an expert.. even if I had been cast as Eliza or even had a line or two). But the man behind "Hamilton" was brilliant in every scene he was in. He made this movie fun and he always lit up the screen when he came on. Of course I know of "Hamilton" but had never seen it and I really hadn't gotten to experience him outside of him writing songs for "Moana"... but the dude is brilliant.
Emily Blunt may not be Julie Andrews and nobody can really touch her in this role (or any she had done over the years for that matter), but the important thing in the end is that she fulfills the role these kids need in this trying time. I just thought to myself how crazy it is how far she'd come as an actress. I first saw her as Emily in "The Devil Wears Prada" and I'd since seen her in a bunch of other roles. She proved she had a flair for musicals in "Into the Woods" and this is just more of that.
Another homage to the original, of course, is everyone being transported into an animated world. Instead of a painting on the street, it's the paint job on a priceless vase that the children cracked in a fight. The penguins make a comeback, but they're comic relief more than anything else. Among the musical scenes, they had a Vaudeville performance where Mary Poppins and Jack talk about how "The Cover Is Not the Book"... and it's kind of about not judging a book by its cover.
A message that does wind up coming back into reality... one thing I will say about this movie was how every detail is important and if you pay attention, you can see what's coming before it arrives. That's always a fun touch.
Meryl Streep is mentioned among the cast... because she's bloody Meryl Streep. Even if she only has five minutes of screen time, she always gets billed on the first page of the cast list. Not to say she isn't great in this movie- her character is fun and memorable. (Not to mention Rob Marshall did the same trick with Johnny Depp in "Into the Woods"- putting on the first page of the cast list even though he doesn't last more than 10 minutes on screen). They take the vase to her to fix because she can fix anything, but she says she cannot because it's the second Wednesday of the month and on that day for 3 hours, the world "turns turtle"... flips upside down. To me, this felt like a homage to that scene in the movie where two men are floating on the ceiling because they're laughing so much. But then they get depresssed and manage to right themselves. They do the reverse here where she realizes that she loves "turning turtle" and it's all about looking from another perspective.
Not sure how more I can say without giving too much away about the movie... it's definitely worth a watch, though.
I'll also say that another good homage they did to the original... the tuppence Michael wanted to give to the bird lady in the original movie do wind up going to good use... I thought that was particularly important because "Feed the Birds" was a scene Walt Disney himself REALLY wanted to stay in the movie because it was his favorite.
For me, it was the one scene in Mary Poppins I really didn't like... it was dank and depressing and as a kid, I didn't really understand the point of it. I think because it was one time in the movie where it stopped being a kid friendly movie and became more adult. But as a kid, I also did not watch a lot of live action media whether it was on TV or in movies. I always preferred animation, which is probably why I didn't really like Mary Poppins all that much. But as I've gotten older, I'm gotten to appreciate it a lot more. I also really need to see the rest of "Saving Mr. Banks"... I really liked however much I saw of that movie and I still need to see how it all ends.
At some point, I'll have to see both movies- Mr. Banks and the original Mary Poppins and write about both of them...
One more thing... it's a trite random comment... the Banks' use a lot of the same names as they did Peter Pan... the Darling children are Wendy, John and Michael. The Banks children are Jane and Michael... and in the sequel, they use the name John as one of the children... were there not a lot of names around back then in London?
I would understand if Peter Pan (the J.M. Barrie story) predated Mary Poppins by a lot of years, but... I don't know if that commonality annoys me or not...
Jane was the name of Wendy's daughter in "Return to Neverland" but that came out LONG after any of these movies (or the books they were based from) came from...
Reading the trivia, Julie Andrews did turn down a cameo (there were some others, I'll say that much) and she also gave her blessing to Emily Blunt to succeed her... that's so great to hear, especially after Angela Lansbury said she didn't approve of them remaking "Beauty & The Beast"... it's not as good as the original, but I liked it a lot. Also Emily Blunt played the character, purposely, much closer to how she appeared in the books, so I thought that was a nice touch.
And also forgot... it was great seeing Julie Walters on screen again, it's been a while... she was so lovable as the Banks' housekeeper.
Grade: A
(not practically perfect... but it came pretty dang close, at least I thought it did... whether or not it's Best Picture material like the original, not quite... I'd rather "A Star is Born" sweep all the awards)
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