She’s Back!

 
If like millions of children over the past 45 years, you have been introduced to Mary Poppins in the 1964 film, she has no doubt found a special place in your heart.  After all, “It’s jolly holiday with Mary.” and she taught you along with Jane and Michael Banks, that “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, in a most delightful way.”  Now she is back to capture the hearts of a new generation of children of all ages in the long anticipated sequel to the original film, Mary Poppins Returns.

For millions of us who watched with wonder the original film in the theaters some 45 years ago, Julie Andrews was and IS Mary Poppins.  She always will be.

Mary Poppins was Andrews first big role and as a young ingenue, she didn’t just play her big role, she truly became Mary Poppins. No matter what other parts she has gone on to play, Julie Andrews has been Mary Poppins playing Maria Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, or Mary Poppins playing in Victor Victoria, or Mary Poppins in the Princess Diaries.

So one might have thought it an impossible task for Emily Blunt, regardless how talented an actress she might be, to take up that mantle and continue the story in the title role.  It was an immense undertaking to be sure.  But to say she isn’t very good and thoroughly enjoyable as Mary, just wouldn’t be quite right.  True, she puts her own spin and stamp on the part, but she makes this film, this story, this cinematic experience, a very lovely one for all children young and old alike.

At the end of the day isn’t that what Mary (no matter who plays her) is all about anyway?  Making the impossible quite possible and reminding us all, no matter our age, what the joys of childhood are supposed to be.  She, Mary that is, is always the adult in the room at all times, but she is the adult who leads us on the most fantastical, whimsical, wonderful adventures that childhood and imagination have to offer.  How could that be anything but magical and thoroughly delightful!

If you haven’t yet seen this new film, Mary Poppins Returns, this weekend would be a good time to go. It is a good time to remember once again, for a little over two hours, what  the innocence of being a child and seeing the world through a childlike perspective of awe and wonder feels like.  It is truly supercalifragilisticexbealidocious!