Mary Poppins (1964)
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Mary Poppins Movie Review
Mary Poppins is a 1964 live-action animated musical film directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. It’s one of the classics of family entertainment.
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“Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way“
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The plot is excellent and actually much more sophisticated than usually given credit for. The film is all about fatherhood in actuality as it showcases the sacrifices of the fathers in the world when it comes to keeping their jobs and raising the whole family. I loved that part about it and that’s where the movie reached true greatness and strong emotional levity.
I personally found the first thirty minutes or so very problematic. I could not understand why Mary herself appeared so late in the game and her absence was most definitely felt as that was the lowest part of the movie and it’s problematic when you start the film this slow and dragged.
But almost everything later on, excluding the Uncle Albert stuff which was such a major filler and he’s so annoying, was amazing. I loved the introduction to Mary and the conditions in which she arrived. Of course, everything with Bert was great. The animated parts are where the movie reached true greatness as those were so charming. The chimneys provided a terrific setting for a song and adventure, the bank scenes were important and the ending’s so emotional.
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Julie Andrews undoubtedly deserved her Oscar win in the titular role. She’s just perfect as Mary Poppins and absolutely iconic in the role. She can be tough and schooling, but at her core she’s motherly, very funny and simply a lot of fun. Her performance is so great that he excelled in each of those aspects.
Dick Van Dyke is more of a caricature as Bert and he certainly overacted the hell out of this role, but there’s no denying that it fitted the role and thus he was great as the character is so endearing and wonderful. The interactions between these two friends are so touching.
The kids are fine, but not particularly memorable individually, though great with the above two. I liked their mother, but the father is such a strong, most complex and ultimately the movie’s greatest character besides Mary herself. Everything with him was so strong and even deep. Admiral Boom is a lot of goofy fun and the bank staff are quite memorable. Overall, this cast of characters is so strong and ultimately even iconic.
Mary Poppins is a family film and it succeeds as a perfect film for children which is still so immensely charming and thus quite enjoyable for adults themselves. Its fantastical elements also really worked for me and in terms of its live-action and animated departments, both worked out splendidly.
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The cinematography is definitely very strong and I just loved the look of the movie overall. There were some truly artistic touches to be had here with the ending flight being iconic and that chimney sequence was in its entirety truly stupendous visually speaking. The sets and the overall production design is so amazing that the film truly had a fairy tale quality to it.
But let’s speak about that animated segment as we only got one unfortunately, but that one was so amazing that I truly loved it. I loved the classic hand-drawn Disney look to that extended sequence with the character design of the animals being so charming. And the actors fitted well within that environment leading to one of the best early cases of the mixing of the two media.
Above all else, Mary Poppins is a musical at heart and truly it is one of the finest musicals ever produced by Hollywood. Certainly there are some clunkers here, but the majority of the numbers are instant classics. Sister Suffragette is so forgettable and unnecessary and the same goes for all of those earliest numbers, but I Love to Laugh is so bad as it is also accompanied by the film’s most terrible sequence.
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But let’s talk about those classics. A Spoonful of Sugar is so wonderful, charming and a perfect nanny song which fits the character and the scene beautifully. It’s so catchy and ultimately very endearing. Let’s Go Fly a Kite is also a beautiful song with perfect lyrics to it and a great chorus that ended off the movie so memorably.
Chim Chim Cher-ee is an absolute classic which won an Oscar against a better song here, but still it’s one of the film’s best and most purely enjoyable, catchy numbers. It’s short, but sweet. It’s a famous Bert number. But Feed the Birds is where the movie reached one of its emotional heights. This song is a serious one unlike many others from this soundtrack and that set it apart so strongly. It’s touching in its sentiment and in the picture that it paints, it’s beautifully sung and so perfect in every way with the imagery and the final chorus being jaw-dropping.
But my favorite number without a doubt has to be Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. This is the most iconic and funniest song title ever and that nonsense part to it made it an instant classic in my book. The lyrics are so damn amusing, the entire sequence plays like a terrific banter between Mary and Bert and the song has an infectious rhythm to it that you can’t help but to sing along with it. A classic by all means.
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Mary Poppins features stellar dialogue, superb direction, excellent acting across the board and a great fantastical side to it. It’s endearing and emotional throughout, but its pacing is problematic as the runtime is too long and thus some scenes are either fillers or prolonged. That’s why it’s a flawed movie which isn’t fantastic and far from perfect, but it’s still one of Disney’s stronger flicks and definitely a family classic for the ages.
With absolutely astonishing production design, wonderful acting across the board, charming humor and endearing story and characters, Mary Poppins does have some dragged sequences and a bit too long running time, but it is one of the best musicals of all time regarding the songs which are mostly splendid – (Chim Chim Cher-ee, Let’s Go Fly a Kite, A Spoonful of Sugar, beautiful Feed the Birds and of course the wonderfully catchy Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious are all undisputed classics). It is an undisputed family classic and one of Disney’s most iconic works.
