Mary Poppins Returns Review

 

Disney fans like many film studios the company has released many sequels over the years with some being good and others being bad. The film that i'm about to review today is in my opinion one of the good sequels and it's a film that I saw twice when the film was first released because I was so in love with it and after watching the film again for this review i'm still in love with it and so here is my review of "Mary Poppins Returns" enjoy.

The plot of the film is Mary Poppins returns to help raise the children of Michael Banks and she has to help The Banks Family when its discovered that their home will be repossessed. In all honesty the plot of the film isn't the film's strongest suit since the story exists just to get from one musical number to the next and nothing more but at the same time you could argue that that's the point since the film is more about rediscovering what it's like to be a childhood and so telling this adult themed story works in context with the film's main goal but it is still a fairly bad story in my opinion.

Starring in the film is Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins , Lin-Manuel Miranda as Jack and Ben Whishaw as Michael Banks. Also starring in the film is Emily Mortimer as Jane Banks , Dame Julie Walters as Ellen , Pixie Davies as Annabel Banks , Nathanael Saleh as John Banks , Joel Dawson as Georgie Banks , Colin Firth as William "Weatherall" Wilkins , Meryl Streep as Topsy , Jeremy Swift as Hamilton Gooding , Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Templeton Frye and Dick Van Dyke as Mr. Dawes Jr.

In all honesty the acting in this film is alot better then what I remember it being which considering that the last time I saw this film was two years ago is a good thing in my opinion. All of the actors in this film do a truly good job playing their characters with alot of them becoming their characters as such I couldn't see the actor I only saw the character which for me at least is a very good thing since you should never see the actor when watching a performance the actor should morph and truly become the character their playing.

Now believe it or not this film actually makes use of traditional 2D hand drawn animation which I believe was done by Walt Disney Animation Studios but I could be wrong. I honestly like that the makers of the film chose to use hand drawn 2D traditional animation since it matches the style of the first film and it helps that the animation in the film is honestly pretty freaking good in my humble opinion.

I honestly wasn't expecting this film to get as emotional as it did while it didn't make me cry at all it did come pretty close. Perhaps the best scene that represents how emotional this film can get is the scene in the attic at the start of the film since to me at least Michael is playing a character when he's in front of people he's playing the part of a confident person who knows exactly what there doing and yet when he's alone he reverts back to his true self someone who misses his recently departed wife and cant cope with the pressures of life and it's this version of Michael that we see in that first scene in the attic and that makes the scene all the more powerful to me.

The other emotional scene or I guess scenes since they both feature the same song that being "The Place Where Lost Things Go" work really well as well. i say that because the first scenes that features "The Place Where Lost Things Go" isn't about someone telling someone else where they can find lost items it's about Mary Poppins telling the kids that everything is going to be ok and the second scene which features a reprise of "The Place Where Lost Things Go" is about the kids telling Michael the exact same thing because it's something that the whole family needed to hear because they were all grieving the loss of a mother and a wife.

                                                                                     

This film has a running time of two hours and ten minuets and twenty nine seconds in my opinion the film didn't need to be that long at all. I say that because story wise there's not alot of plot to cover that long of a running time if anything this film should have been at least an hour and forty minuets if not maybe an hour and forty five minuets but with that said the film does fly by and part of that is due to the fact that the film is honestly really fun to watch and so you don't notice the time going by which in my opinion is a very good thing indeed.

Now then boys and girls since this is musical that means that I have to talk about the songs in the film which were written by the film's composer Marc Shaiman and song writer Scott Wittman. In all honesty I liked the songs in this film with alot of the songs being very catchy with perhaps my personal favourite song being "Can You Imagine That?" just because it's such a fun song as well as being a wonderfully sung song as well since Emily Blunt, Pixie Davies , Joel Dawson and Nathanael Saleh all sing the song rather well in my opinion.

For some weird reason the makers of this film chose to give this film an action packed third act which it just doesn't need. I honestly feel that if this film had a much smaller more emotional third act finale it would have worked better but due to this film being released a a time where every film needs to have an action packed third act finale this film has one even tho the story really doesn't demand an epic third act finale but that's just what I think tho.

Overall this is honestly a really good film does it have it's faults yes but what film doesn't and to me the people who are focusing on the film's faults have forgotten what it's like to be a kid. I'm not saying that this film is perfect because in all honesty it's not but the film does alot more right then it does get things wrong in my opinion as such this film gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me and as for where I got the images that I used in this review from well I got them from the official Disney fandom wiki page which I honestly recommend due to not only the wide verity of images but also due to the fact that the images that they have are very high quality.