OVP: Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Film: Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
Stars: Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, Joel Dawson, Julie Walters, Dick van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Colin Firth, Meryl Streep
Director: Rob Marshall
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Costume Design, Score, Production Design, Original Song-"The Place Where the Lost Things Go")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We live in a world of sequels and remakes.  Hollywood is learning this the hard way this summer as we watch a perpetual list of movies like Men in Black International and Shaft fail to make an indent at the Box Office (pretty much anyone who isn't Marvel has been struggling with remakes/followups this year).  But I'm more curious, as we get to a culture where we're constantly remaking films, what the role of film criticism would be in this case, particularly when it comes to classic films being remade or reinvented, but largely having the same plot as before.  Remakes are not new (this was the fourth A Star is Born movie last year, after all), but they are nearly constant right now, and one has to wonder when it comes to truly landmark films like A Star is Born or Mary Poppins or (later this year) West Side Story, what sort of curve should you be judging on when you look at the film itself compared to its classic predecessor?  How do you judge a film that's essential a carbon copy of its original?

(Spoilers Ahead) This was a question that I wrestled with when looking at Mary Poppins Returns, a movie that is lovely and pleasant on the surface of it, but it also is basically the same exact movie from 1964.  The problem is, that while I've seen the original film, it was not a cornerstone of my childhood the way that it was for so many people perhaps a few years older than me.  Julie Andrews was Maria von Trapp in my world, not Mary Poppins, and so I can understand the vast appeal of this movie to an audience that isn't enamored with the original.  The film's premise is that of a sequel even if it's basically a copy of the first film, with Mary Poppins (Blunt) returning years after taking care of the Banks children Michael (Whishaw) and Jane (Mortimer), and now must look after them again as Michael is about to lose their house and Jane is, well, in need of a man (Jane seems fine, but it's Disney so we need to throw in some heteronormative stuff rather than risk Jane being a lesbian).  She joins them as the nanny to Michael's three children after his wife dies, and they set off on a series of adventures across town with Topsy (Mary Poppins's cousin, played by Meryl Streep) and Jack (Miranda, whose character is an apprentice of Dick van Dyke's Bert) occasionally getting in on the fun.

This is a lovely little film.  The songs are not as memorable as the original, but that's a hard bar to clear, and you have such game performers all-around that you don't really notice that they aren't that good until you've left the theater.  Miranda & Blunt are a perfect odd-pair, with her cool standoffishness (a nice mirror of the original with Julie Andrews) and his unceasing nice-guy charisma working well together.  The supporting cast is lovely (Whishaw & Mortimer aren't really capable of being "not lovely") and the cameos are springy (in addition to Streep, we have Dick van Dyke playing a different character but still a true joy to see on the screen, and we also get the Balloon Lady ala Angela Lansbury).  The film won four Oscar nominations, and it's easy to see why as Disney assembled a top-notch crew to recreate one of their most seminal classics.

But it's basically the same movie as the 1964 version, albeit with less surprise and an almost constant need to make you swim in nostalgia.  This is Disney's MO recently, and I'm not inhuman-I liked it, I cried when Dick van Dyke got on that desk and started to dance, but it's also kind of manipulative.  It's objectively a lesser film than its predecessor, and it's genuinely hard to tell if it's actually any good because it only works with the previous movie, which it's wholesale ripping off.  But I liked it, so I'm going with 3 stars, which feels about right for a movie that I enjoyed, but can't really confirm if it's good or just trying to take me back to my childhood, even though my childhood didn't really feature Mary Poppins.  A conundrum of a film, but a good one for a lazy afternoon.