When this movie's teaser trailer was shown few times earlier, I did not have any excitement yet, but I did know it was a sequel to a very famous movie from Disney many years back. As it was a family movie and my wife seemed to be very interested in watching it, we decided to see it on the first day it premiered which happened to be on Christmas holiday as well. We saw this at a cinema not far from our home. Well let us get on with the film now.
Brief Story Line
Set in the 1930s in London, Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw - Paddington, The Danish Girl etc) had to take care of his young 3 children: the twins Annabel & John and the youngest Georgie by himself. He only got help from his sister Jane (Emily Mortimer - Shutter Island, Hugo etc) and their housekeeper Ellen (Julie Walters - Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Harry Potter series etc). It was difficult for Michael to take care of them while having to work at the bank under his boss Mr. Wilkins (Colin Firth - Kingsman: The Golden Circle and its predecessor Bridget Jones trilogy etc). So when a nanny named Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt - A Quiet Place, The Girl on the Train etc) came and offered herself to work with the Banks, Michael & Jane accepted her immediately.
Meanwhile Michael also had another major problem involving his loan with the bank. With limited time to settle the loan, he had to find ways to solve it. The children also tried their best to help, and they got the support from Mary Poppins, as well as a lamp lighter named Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda) who seemed to be able to do anything.
So how would the story concluded? Find them all in this fun musical movie.
End of Brief Story Line
This movie was the sequel to a very famous and successful 1964 movie titled Mary Poppins with Julie Andrews as the main character. I have never seen the film before and I did intend to watch it via online streaming before we saw this sequel, but I failed to do it. So when we finally saw this one, I was unaware of what kind of movie I was seeing. It started with Jack singing a song, and immediately I realized it was a musical movie. And for the rest of 130 minutes duration of this movie, it was filled with soooo many songs. This was the type of musical movie where in almost every situation, we would be shown the characters singing songs to pour their hearts out.
However, not all the characters in here sang. There were also few who did not sing at all. The majority of the songs here were sung by Emily Blunt and/or Lin-Manual Miranda, with few songs by Ben Whishaw. I got to admit that Emily Blunt here was amazing as this magical nanny character. And as the movie was about a nanny taking care of children for a British family set in the old days, it kind of remind me of Nanny McPhee movies (but my wife highlighted that in those movies, the children were mostly very naughty, while in here the children were very mature for their age). Another guy that impressed me a lot was obviously Lin-Manuel Miranda who was very good in his singing. My wife said that his songs were mostly very nice to hear which I also agreed. I was particularly amazed by the song he sang together with Blunt in the animated world which had very long words titled A Cover is not the Books.
The wonderful part about this movie was actually the songs but for me personally, not all the songs were my favorite, probably because they were not really the pop-ish songs that I tend to love. Although there was one song that I really loved and I thought was very beautiful titled The Place where Lost Things Go, which were sung twice by Emily Blunt and by the children. Yes the very young children were able to sing and they were played so wonderfully by Pixie Davis & Nathanael Saleh as the twins, plus Joel Dawson as the small Georgie. The cast in here were all very great in portraying their characters. We also got some major names like Meryl Streep as the eccentric Topsy, Angela Lansbury as the balloon lady and even Dick Van Dyke also gave minor appearance in here, reprising his role in the original movie.
I also found that the special effects here when combining the live action part and the animation were very smoothly done. The story was classic Disney with family love as the main ingredient. Not much surprises to see and personally I also thought the story was actually very short and without the songs, it would probably be finished in half the duration. As a person who had just started to enjoy musical movies, I had a sense that the songs were a bit too many, especially as I said earlier, this was not the pop-ish type. The songs had a sense of the oldies type (like really oldies from the 1960s, probably because one or two songs were from that original film). I am not sure if I could say for the non-musical fans out there, but if their sense were similar to mine, then there is chance they would not be able to enjoy it as much as the musical genre fans do.
Overall, as a family friendly movie, this one certainly fit the category. Musical movie fans would surely totally enjoy it, while the fans of original movie (some of them I noticed came to see this movie in theater yesterday) would also love it as it probably gave a nostalgic feeling. I know my wife who was a musical movie lover and also a big fan of family movie was touched heavily by this film. She was unable to stop her tears towards the ending of this movie due to its emotional moments and the heart warming scenes. Btw, no mid or post end credit scenes, but you could enjoy songs playing during that time. For me though, despite knowing that this was a wonderful movie which won the critics' heart and even got multiple Golden Globe nominations, my enjoyment was not up to the maximum because it was not really my cup of tea. And I say this in the utmost respect of the movie that it was certainly a beautiful film, but not my most favorite one.
So those who want to see this movie, should be ready for nonstop music and songs throughout the whole film, with some touching scenes and a short & simple story. I also thought that it might be a good idea to watch the 1964 movie to better enjoy the film as it would give you the nostalgic sense plus the appreciation of the story as it was set 25 years after the events of that one, plus there were characters who re-appeared in here. However, even if you did not see it, you could still understand the story.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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