Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) returns to the Banks home after many years and uses her magical skills to help the now grown up Michael and Jane rediscover the joy and wonder missing in their lives in MARY POPPINS RETURNS.
I continue to watch the original movie still. Sing each song. Smile and laugh as if I’m seeing it for the first time. The original Mary Poppins was released on August 27, 1964. I was just nine years old and smitten with the film. It came at a particularly hard time in my youth. My parents had just divorced. We lived in a really small town (1 square mile). A town where everyone was catholic and no one divorced. I remember an over-whelming sense of dread at the thought of going back to school in September. Trying to think of ways to explain to people how much my life had changed. And then there was Mary! I secretly wished for the longest time that she could be my nanny! I wanted to dance with penguins. I wanted to go fly a kite! After all, in every job that must be done – there is an element of fun!
The original film enjoyed universal acclaim, received a total of thirteen Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture—an unsurpassed record for any other film released by Walt Disney Studios—and won five; Best Actress for Julie Andrews, Best Film Editing, Best Original Music Score, Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Song for “Chim Chim Cher-ee“. In 2013, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. The film is widely considered to be Walt Disney’s “crowning achievement”. Like the recent remake of The Jungle Book, this film holds a special place in my heart. A film that offers so many childhood memories.
Directed and produced by Rob Marshall, MARY POPPINS RETURNS stars Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins, and also stars Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer and Julie Walters with Colin Firth and Meryl Streep.
The film, which introduces three new Banks children, played by Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh and newcomer Joel Dawson, also features Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury. The film is set in 1930s depression-era London (the time period of the original novels) and is drawn from the wealth of material in PL Travers’ additional seven books. In the story, Michael (Whishaw) and Jane (Mortimer) are now grown up, with Michael, his three children and their housekeeper, Ellen (Walters), living on Cherry Tree Lane. After Michael suffers a personal loss, the enigmatic nanny Mary Poppins (Blunt) re-enters the lives of the Banks family, and, along with the optimistic street lamplighter Jack (Miranda), uses her unique magical skills to help the family rediscover the joy and wonder missing in their lives. Mary Poppins also introduces the children to a new assortment of colorful and whimsical characters, including her eccentric cousin, Topsy (Streep). The film is produced by Marshall, John DeLuca and Marc Platt. The screenplay is by David Magee based on The Mary Poppins Stories by PL Travers with Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman writing all new songs and Shaiman composing an original score.
MARY POPPINS RETURNS will be released in U.S. theaters on December 25, 2018! I can’t wait!
