Hey, just curious, did a lot of people want to bang Mary Poppins when the first one came out?
Asking for a friend…
Okay, before this thread becomes a free-for-all, has anyone here SEEN the movie?
My family plans to catch the matinee Wed or Thurs.
We need to go while our daughters are home from college.
Mary Poppins did pretty good box office the opening weekend, 2nd behind Aquaman. Bumblebee came in 3rd.
The reviews seem to be lukewarm positive. Good, but far from great.
The main audience complaint I’ve seen is that the songs are just nowhere as good as the original’s. For a musical, that’s a fairly hard slam. OTOH, matching the original just wasn’t going to happen.
Fun trivia question: In which of the top two movies opening this week did Julie Andrews have a cameo?
I saw the original when it was first in the theaters, but I was too young to know about such things, let alone have such urges.
We watched it on DVD just a few years ago, so the Firebug could see it. (He’s eager to see the sequel.) Can’t say she moved me in that way now, either.
Saw the original when I was in fourth grade. Got and memorized the soundtrack album soon afterwards. The movie’s one of the happiest memories of my childhood.
At the time, I thought Julie Andrews was pretty but no great beauty.* I haven’t been able to see her the same way since she was cariacaturized in MAD Magazine’s “The $ound of Money.”
*Her being British made up for this a lot. :o
Well then you need to see SOB.
I saw Mary Poppins Returns yesterday, and I thought it was practically perfect in every way.
The first two songs didn’t thrill me, so I wasn’t sure how the music would be (I can sing every song from the original movie). But there are at least four really nice showstopping songs that I want to learn.
Lin-Manuel Miranda is wonderfully loveable, and Emily Blunt captures Mary Poppins very well. I didn’t really compare her to Julie Andrews, more just to the nature of the character, and I think Emily did her justice.
If there is a weak actor, I think it’s the one who plays the adult Michael, but it doesn’t really hurt the film.
In addition to Dick an Dyke, who was wonderful, there is a surprise cameo at the end of the movie that was extra special for me.
I had a smile on my face that never left starting at about 15 minutes in, and after about 45 minutes I was already thinking about seeing it again. I think it’s going to be another Disney classic.
I had the official laserdisc of “Pulp Fiction” from Japan while the movie was still in theaters in the US in early 1995.
I saw it today, as well. I liked it; I think it’s 77% rotten tomatoes score is going to be heavily split along age lines.
It is very, very, very faithful to the original in spirit, tone, pacing, and characterization. It has some of the same weaknesses, too (it’s a bit too long, several of the songs sound alike, it’s slow by modern standards, and there’s no real suspense as to the ending; in fact I guessed several specific details very early in the film).
If you liked the original, you’ll like this. If you didn’t, you won’t. They’re nearly the same movie in a lot of ways.
Why? We’re talking about Julie Andrews in the role of Mary Poppins. Does she play Mary Poppins in S.O.B.?
(And does Nathaniel Rateliff perform the theme song? ;))
Let me tell you about seeing The Last Seduction (1994). Mrs. FtG saw a review in the paper and wanted to go see it, so, sure, why not?
A short bit into it I thought “This seems very familiar.” And it got incredibly familiar. I had seen it earlier on HBO or some such. I recorded it 'cause it was only run in the middle of the night. Watched it. This is dumb.
So I ended up paying to watch a dumb movie a second time in the theater.
Turns out some critics fell in love with it for mysterious reasons and the studio regretted it going to video so they released it into theaters.
Netflix and Amazon do the obligatory minimum theater run to qualify for awards, sometimes start airing the movie on their services, award nominations start rolling in, put it up in a few theaters more as an ad for their services.
And then there are overseas films, esp. small British ones. A film might be sold to one US streaming service and a different US theater distributor. The film can become available online before it hits US theaters.
My family and I went yesterday. We had watched the original at home on Christmas Day.
The new Mary Poppins is very similar and equally good. I enjoyed the music. It may not be quite as memorable as the original, but the music is certainly well done.
Emily Blunt has indicated in interviews that she’d like to play the role again. Travers wrote several books that could be developed into screenplays. I’d enjoy seeing this character again.
Lin-Manuel is very good and I enjoyed the kids.
The review I got from a friend yesterday who saw it with his kids: it’s very much a movie that could have been made in the 60s, like the original; adults who enjoyed the original will enjoy this one.
His kids OTOH, were bored to tears. They begged to go see Bumblebee instead, but their grandmother made them see this.
There’s no comparison between an action movie like Bumblebee and Mary Poppins. It’s a musical fantasy story.
Action movies are a big draw. There’s no getting around that.
Frozen was released while still in theaters; a sing-along version had just hit theaters the month before.
Random thoughts -
It’s obviously an attempt to recreate the tone and feel of the original. At that it is very successful. However, when the original came out, Disney was at the height of being the purveyor of this type of entertainment. In addition, Hollywood was also sending out similar product from other studios. Today, that is not the case. So, this becomes more of an exercise in nostalgia rather than an artistic work in its own right.
Comparing Lin-Manuel Miranda to Dick Van Dyke is interesting. At the time of the original, Van Dyke was a well known quantity from TV. While Lin-Manuel is definitely the right choice in the talent department, I would be curious if he is well known enough to the average viewer, outside of the type of person who would be up on Broadway hits? I suspect there are equally talented performers who are more well known broadly. It would be interesting to know who else might have been considered.
I thought Emily Blunt captured the character very well.
Regarding the music, I felt that they tried to make every damn song a showstopper. I needed a little more balance and variety.
There were a couple of choices that hit an off note to me. Having Mary Poppins turn into Sally Bowles in the Royal Doulton number just struck me as being off-brand. Also, while Ben Wishaw’s commitment to the reality of the character was good acting, his tearful “we’re going to lose the house” scene really felt too real, considering the rest of the movie. After all, they hand waved the issue away with them moving in with the sister, so it’s not like they were in real danger. I blame the director for not reeling that scene back just a hair.
In the final analysis, I would say they just tried too hard.
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Saw it yesterday. I liked the original, and I liked this. But I strongly suspect that, unlike the original, nobody’s going to be watching Mary Poppins Returns five years from now, let alone fifty. One is a classic, the other is decent entertainment for an afternoon.
Like you say, “they’re nearly the same movie in a lot of ways,” and that’s a flaw, not a strength. So many of the scenes were clearly modeled after particular scenes in the original. I can see them saying, “we need a scene like the rooftop scene,” or “we need a scene like the ‘go fly a kite’ scene.”
Yeppers to this, particularly with the music.
I also thought the decision to make the movie about losing the house from the get-go was a mistake. The original movie’s plot driver is that nannies keep quitting on them, giving up on keeping Jane and Michael in line; George Banks loses his job very late in the film, and the way it was handled wasn’t at war with the fundamental lightheartedness of the rest of the film.
But in this movie, the notice of repossession, and the recent death of Michael’s wife, are front and center from the beginning, and the Mary Poppins approach to these issues really doesn’t work very well, IMHO.
Saw it a couple of days ago - wife REALLY loved it. I thought it was OK.
Good description by Icarus. they really lost me early on, w/ the main adult male lead being such an incompetent mope. Thought the cartoon bit went a tad long. And didn’t care for the Meryl Streep character.
I really liked the original MP - saw it in the theater when it came out, and several times w/ my kids. Think I would’ve liked it if I saw it for the first time as an adult. Music was good, acting strong, some good humor for kids and adults. But I don’t see the need to remake/update it. I feel similarly to when the Coens remade true Grit - why?
Emily Blunt was an exceptional MP. Movie was very colorful and active - would think it would appeal to most kids.
How old were the kids who were “bored to tears” by the new MP? if they were under 10-12, I find it quite sad that they would be unable to appreciate as sweet and colorful a film at this, instead of the mindless slam-bang frenetic Transformers crap. But that is likely a commentary on what is presented as childrens’ “entertainment” these days.
I saw it with my mom and my 7-year-old niece. I kept feeling like the movie was going to lose her during some of the heavier parts but she enjoyed the musical numbers and came away satisfied.
The original is probably my favorite Disney movie. I liked this one but it did seem a bit too heavy. Ben Whishaw is darling but boy his mustache was distracting. I liked the character of Jane and that she was a union supporter, like the mom was a women’s suffrage supporter in the original.
The dancing and singing was good. The trick bike riding towards the end was a pleasant surprise!! Miranda was good, I like him in everything.
I agree with whoever said this won’t be a repeat viewing kind of thing. But it was worth it to see in the theater and I’m glad I went.