By Clare Mankin

Business Manager

Mary Poppins Returns directed by Robert Marshall, is a new take on the cult classic, that can resonate with all generations. The movie is based on the Banks children, both young and old, and how overwhelmed with impossible issues they are.

Like in the original, Mary Poppins returns to Cherry Tree Lane just in time to help solve the family’s impossible problems with her perfectly impossible solutions. The film was released in December of 2018 and has a running time of 2 hours and 10 minutes with the combined genres of music, adventure, animation, family, and fantasy.  

The movie opens with Jack the Leerie (Lin Manuel Miranda) going around London turning down all the lamp lights while singing about the “Lovely London Sky,” setting up the plot by ending the song on Cherry Tree Lane.

This then spurs the introduction of the Banks family, a grown adult version of Michael and Jane Banks (Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer) along with Michaels own children, Little Georgie, Jack, and Annabel Banks (Joel Dawson, Nathanael Saleh, and Pixie Davies).

The beginning focuses solely on the hardships the Banks family has encountered in the past year and the start of the story’s plotline for a pressing and immediate issue that they are about to undergo. While these problems arise, Michael and Jane are trying desperately to fix everything, Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) shows up to “take care of the Banks family,” and dastardly schemes are set in place that could wreck the family’s very foundation.  

The original Mary Poppins starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke is considered a timeless classic by millions. The film that has occupied the imaginations for the past three generations was a cinematic masterpiece that transcended the way the world viewed film and Walt Disney himself.

This Disney classic has been shaping the minds of children everywhere for the past 55 years. This then begs the question, will the re-bute of the fantastical world be just as transcending and loved?

The sequel has led many to theaters, either to relive their favorite childhood memory or to create new ones with their own children. It has made an astounding box office gross of $329,125,452 worldwide at a production budget of $130 million. These numbers show how many people were looking forward to it, however, they don’t show that the public love it.

According to the New York Times, Mary Poppins Returns is a “Mostly charmless venture, is a modest update of the 1964 film — one that has brushed off the story, making it louder, harsher, more aggressively smiley.”

Rolling Stones magazine said that the films leading lady, Emily Blunt “Adds needed spice to the movie’s heaping spoonfuls of sugar” with all her “Drollness and dazzle.”

The movie itself holds a certain charisma that rivals the first and holds onto the classical sense of Mary Poppins herself in a more updated version. It inspires hope and the thought that the impossible is possible during dark, hopeless times.

In the end, this dive back into the fantastical world of a timeless classic has brought back childhood memories long forgotten and has created new ones for those of a new generation.