Review #597: 'Mary Poppins' (1964)

I'd like to think that I've seen a lot of movies, of varying quality and genre; enough to believe I have at least a basic grasp of cinema as a whole. But during all the classics and tripe I've endured over the years, Mary Poppins has somehow managed to evade me. I was too busy watching rabbits getting torn to pieces in Watership Down (1978) and clapping giddily at Rocky Balboa's training montage in Rocky (1976) as a child to be distracted by something quite as colourful as this. So, it's at the ripe old age of 28 that I came round to sitting through Mary Poppins, to struggle through its squeaky-clean visage and many, many songs that I somehow knew all the words to before seeing the film. Well, I was wrong to be so cynical, as although the film is hardly what I would call a classic, it's really rather good.

London, 1910. Merry jack-of-all-trades Bert (Dick Van Dyke) is playing a one-man-band to an enthusiastic street audience when he senses something magical in the air, signalling the return of his good friend Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews). He takes us into the stable yet unhappy Banks' family home, where the household is ran by lord-of-his-castle Mr. Banks (David Tomlinson), and his suffragette wife Mrs. Banks (Glynis Johns). Busy attending to work and other matters, the Banks' have started to neglect their children, Jane (Karen Dotrice) and Michael (Matthew Garber). After their umpteenth nanny walks out on them, Mr. Banks makes a desperate newspaper plea for a nanny who will lay down the law, and teach the children respect and the harshness of life. So enters Mary Poppins, 'perfect in every way', a nanny who is as strict as she needs to be but one capable of also showing the children the joys of life.

Mary Poppins suffers mainly from the same thing that I feel plagues most musicals - it's too long. Seemingly every musical feels the need to round-up every change of emotion and sub-plot with a grand song-and-dance number that gets old quickly. The first half of the film is pure family entertainment, with memorable songs and some stunning special effects (for its day) making the film zip by happily. Then the songs get more clunky and forgettable, and we are exposed to much more of Dick Van Dyke's terrible accent and his grating, over-enthusiastic Bert than we need (although I'm sure he has his many fans). Yet after the somewhat exhausting 139 minutes is over, Poppins still leaves you with that cuddly feeling inside, something I thought had died inside me when I sprouted my first pube.

Most of the success of Poppins comes from the performance of Julie Andrews. All sweet and idyllic, she could have come across as a stuck-up Miss Perfect, but Andrews' effortless likeability and stage experience makes her more of a supernatural missionary, sent to make a stand against Mr. Banks' stern and rigid outlook on life. Disney were really coming out of their Golden Era at the time of this being released, but it's still one of their most fondly remembered, and certainly their most critically successful live-action efforts. It's more than likely that children will turn away from it, due to the mega-bucks spewed into children's films these days, but it will continue to enchant adults, especially those that grew up with it, and even those new to it, like me. Chim-chimernee, chim-ernee, chim chim, cheroo! Damn it, it's in my head again!


Directed by: Robert Stevenson
Starring: Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns
Country: USA/UK

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie