Review: "Mary Poppins Returns"

“Mary Poppins Returns” doesn’t just bring back the characters and settings from the iconic 1964 film. It actually attempts to revive the musical genre as it was more than a half-century ago: blessedly un-ironic, family-friendly and with snappy old-school Broadway-style show tunes.

It garnered a PG rating from the MPAA, but really it doesn’t even merit a hard G.

I’ll be curious to see how modern audiences respond to a movie that, aside from a little CGI animation, could’ve been plucked straight out of the 1960s and dropped into theaters today. There are some zippy action sequences and big show pieces, but I’m not sure if dancing and singing is enough to hold the interest of smaller children. (My kids’ attention wandered.)

First and foremost, let’s talk about Emily Blunt taking over Julie Andrews’ first, and most famous, role. She’s terrific, and her singing is tremendous. Blunt brings some of that slight touch of imperiousness but without trying to mimic Andrews’ mannerisms. Her Mary is friendly but a little frosty. All her interactions are tinged with the certain knowledge that she will soon depart.

Still, when she first comes riding down out of the clouds, holding her umbrella and with her high heels cocked akimbo, it’s a pretty magical moment.

The story, based on the works of P. L. Travers, again has her helping out the Banks children, though a new generation. Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane ( Emily Mortimer) are now grown up, and Michael has three moppets of his own. He’s recently a widower, and money is tight in Great Depression-era London. The tale opens with a pair of bank collectors nailing an eviction notice on the door of the Banks family home.

The head banker, Wilkins (Colin Firth), offers his sympathy but we don’t really believe him; he twirls his gold pocket watch a little too flippantly. Mary Poppins arrives just in time to watch over the children -- Annabel (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanael Saleh) and Georgie (Joel Dawson) -- while Michael and Jane search desperately for the certificate of bank shares that will save the day.

(If you can’t spot where it is early on, you’re not paying attention.)

Of course, the story (screenplay by David Magee) is merely an excuse to set up adventures and singing. The score and songs are by Marc Shaiman, with lyrics by Scott Wittman. They’re quite good, though I’m not sure if any will go on to become as immortal as “A Spoonful of Sugar” or “Super‐cali‐fragil‐istic‐expi‐ali‐docious.”

Personally, my favorites are “Trip a Little Light Fantastic,” which is accompanied by some ravishing animation that the characters step into, and “Nowhere to Go But Up,” a helium-fueled flight of fancy.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, no stranger to musicals, cements the supporting cast as Jack, a working-class lamplighter who apprenticed to Bert, the Dick Van Dyke character from the original. Speaking of, Van Dyke himself pops up for a little number, showing off a nice little soft-shoe at age 92. Julie Walters is the cantankerous Banks housekeeper, Ellen.

Meryl Streep turns up as Topsy, a vaguely Slavic cousin of Mary’s who can fix most anything, when her home isn’t turned upside down. Angela Lansbury also has a bit role, and David Warner plays Admiral Boom, the retired naval office next door who insists upon firing a cannon to mark the hour, though he’s getting older and is always five minutes off.

Director Rob Marshall is a musical veteran (“Chicago,” “Nine”) who keeps things moving at a brisk pace, providing just enough characterization and story to glide us into the next razzle-dazzle musical number. This is good old-fashioned moviemaking with no ambitions beyond to entertain. But that it does, and in many spoonfuls.

Review: "Spectre"

Just a few thoughts today on the new James Bond film. Evan Dossey is handling the main review over at The Film Yap, so head there to read his more complete thoughts.

The Daniel Craig Bond flicks have been defined by their dourness, and while that was a welcome change from the breeziness of the Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton movies -- not to mention the nearly pure comedy of the Roger Moore era -- it's starting to wear down the franchise, like a repetitive stress injury.

Director Sam Mendes is back at the helm again, a rarity in the Bond tradition, but "Skyfall" was the highest-grossing 007 film ever, so if he was game there really wasn't anyone to tell him different. Craig is loudly and publicly musing over whether he wants to play the British agent again, and there's a lot of chatter about Idris Elba or Tom Hiddleston or (insert latest rumor here) sliding into the role.

Without giving anything away, I will say that the ending of "Spectre" is such that it could either neatly wrap up Craig's tenure in the black tuxedo, or set up one final go-round.

It's very much a story of beginnings and endings, with most of the familiar Bond solar system -- M, Q, Moneypenny -- now replaced with fresher faces. James Bond is widely viewed as an anachronism by the British intelligence services, who are more keen on data and satellite imagery and drones than guys wandering around with a license to kill.

The movie for me is more of a Greatest Hits version of James Bond than anything else I've seen. Names and faces of villains and allies from the recent past are recalled and, forcibly, linked to one another. We're told that a sinister organization named Spectre has been behind nearly all the troubles Bond has encountered in recent years, with one shadowy figure at the head of the table.

I'm not giving anything away in saying that Christoph Waltz plays the chief villain, or surprising anyone by stating that he's the best thing about the movie. (You could say that about most films with Waltz.) He plays Franz Oberhauser, a supposedly dead guy with an intimate connection to Bond that I wouldn't divulge.

Suffice to say that rather than pursuing some overarching goal of world domination, Oberhauser -- who also has adopted another, familiar, moniker -- seems to delight in creating chaos and pain for its own sake. Particularly when that pain is Bond's own.

Waltz has surprisingly little screen time, but makes the most of it.

The main "Bond girl" is a bit of a disappointment, the sloe-eyed Léa Seydoux as the daughter of an infamous villain. (Why are so many female characters in spy movies the daughter of somebody important, instead of just being important themselves?) The script, a thinly written affair by a committee of four, doesn't give her much to do but react to Bond's carnivore magnetism. 

Better is Monica Bellucci in an all-too-brief appearance as a recently widowed Italian who gets intimate with the man who made her a widow. Bellucci, still a stunner at 50 -- rendering her the oldest Bond conquest of all -- shows more steel and fire in her few minutes of screen time than Seydoux does in the rest of the movie.

Craig is still a terrific Bond, the best I think aside from Sean Connery, a skilled enough actor to let slip the pain that lies just behind the eyes of the icy killer. And there are a few good action scenes and chases, particularly when Bond mixes it up with Dave Bautista, a Herculean tentacle of Spectre.

"Spectre" is entirely watchable, and parts of it are even thrilling. But there's something missing here, a vital essence that seems to have drained away. This iteration of the Bond legend feels tired, grumpy, chippy. It senses the anticipation for the next thing, even shares it, but isn't quite ready to let go of the Walther PPK and Aston Martin.