So this is a weird one for me because I don’t usually review kids movies, I don’t usually watch kids movies. But Mary Poppins is a classic from my childhood so I felt I had to watch just to gauge how desperate and depraved the industry had gotten. I wanted to know how absolutely out of ideas they are and they didn’t disappoint. There isn’t a single new idea to be found.

Where to begin with this movie? How would I describe it in one word? Uninspired? Pointless? Flaccid? Cynical?

Ok that’s a lot of words.

I didn’t expect much from this but I expected to be pleasantly surprised since this is a weird franchise to bring back. So you know right off the bat the movie is back either because they have new exciting ideas or want to be more true to the books or they’re just desperate for cash and want to dig up an old movie to milk for nostalgia.

Imagine my shock that it’s the latter.

The first thing that shocked me was the fact it’s not a remake it’s trying to be a cannon sequel. I didn’t know whether to be mad or impressed by the chutzpah it took to do that. It’s like bringing out a sequel to the bible. You can’t even be mad, you’re just stunned someone would have the gaul to do that.

So I’m like ‘ok ok lets just see what happens’, then proceed to be bored for two hours as the movie is basically a shot for shot remake of the original but worse.
First off this movie just confuses me because Mary Poppins just shows up, but only specifically for this family and no one questions why and why she hasn’t aged more than just mentioning it off the cuff, seriously is she a vampire? Is she satan? With a different director this could have been a horror movie. A weird magical being comes down from the sky to be alone with this guys kids.

The casting is ok I guess, I mean Julie Andrews was practically perfect in every way and honestly Emily Blunt kinda comes off as a bitch. I don’t know how Julie Andrews did it but she was stern but never came off like she thought her shit didn’t stink.

Mentioning Julie Andrews is weird because the movie has a bunch of really weird and bad cameos, notably from Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury and Meryl Streep? Julie Walters is of course in every English kids film now for reasons. And I know Julie Andrews is still alive and they must have asked her to come back in a cameo but she had to have turned it down and I can see why. The Angela Lansbury cameo is weird because this movie did seem like it was ripping off Bedknobs and Broomsticks a lot which is my number one childhood movie and if they do a shitty cash grab remake of that I will burn disney down (in minecraft).

Because there’s this shitty singalong bit where they’re having a bath and they go under the sea for no particular plot reason, it’s just an excuse for a song and some cg. Whereas in Bedknobs they actually needed to go under the sea. It wasn’t an excuse to use the cgi budget.

Meryl Streep is the weirdest cameo because just why? What kids movies is she famous for? Sophie’s choice? It’s just a weird choice, I guess it’s just because of her singing in Momma mia maybe, I dunno. It just felt really out of place and her scene is just a crappy remake of the floating house scene in the original. And it was totally irrelevant to the plot.

Because they have a magical trip into the painting of this vase which is a crappy remake of the scene when they enter the chalk painting in the original. But then they chip the vase and have to get it fixed by Meryl Streep who can fix anything apparently. And the reason they need it fixed is because they need money or they’ll lose their house to the bank or whatever. So she fixes it but it turns out its not worth anything so everything up to that point in the movie is just a waste of time with shitty broadway musical interludes with the most forgettable songs ever.

The plot couldn’t be more basic; ‘Oh no evil white male bankers trying to steal my house, we need money to save the house’. I mean is there an older plot? I could think of like ten movies that did this better right off the bat.

My thing with this movie is it’s sort of trying to copy the appeal of Paddington, the thing with that though is Paddington had never been done on the big screen I don’t think. His re-imagining was necessary and the movies were fun. The stories were basic but the characters and jokes were good. They’re both enjoyable films. But I feel like this movie just exists to capitalise on that, it exists not because someone knew it needed to happen but because someone knew they needed a new boat.

It’s not a bad movie, it’s just not good enough to exist. It just ok, and just being ok doesn’t warrant a remake or a reboot or a direct sequel. If you’re going to dig up the corpse of a classic you better make that shit shine and they didn’t, everything about it is just bog standard and lazy and by the numbers which is just frustrating. It’s cynicism leaps off the screen and when you see through the bright light you see the rotting corpse of the original movie being puppetted around on stage by greedy soulless blood sucking producers who have no tact and no respect for a classic movie and would probably dig up their mothers to pluck out her gold fillings.

The movie as a whole from the songs and the acting and the accents feels like a school play or a broadway adaptation of the movie, it doesn’t feel cannon to it’s own world. It feels cheap, it feels like an imitation of the original and it stinks. It’s like they tried to cargo cult the original movie, the name is there, the settings and the music but the spirit and the magic that made the movie what it was just isn’t.
I mean they replace Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep character with this schlubby guy who’s a ‘Lamplighter’, oh bro that’s so creative, that’s nothing like a chimney sweep. And of course there’s a part where all the lamplighters dance like the chimney sweep scene but less good. I don’t know if I can’t like anything anymore but I remember liking the dancing in the original and the dancing and songs just sort washed over my face without really registering in this movie.

Don’t waste your time on it and show your kids the original movie, because it still has the same magic this movie totally fails to recapture.

Last warning hollywood/disney; Stay away from this angry gymcel manbabies childhood!
If you come for the goonies or bedknobs and broomsticks all bets are off! (In roblox)