Mary Poppins

This movie smacks of Walt Disney. The imagination, innovation, creativity, and emotion are all Disney trademarks, and this was one of the last films Disney himself personally oversaw throughout production. That being said, I do not know how much of P.L. Travers' book actually appears here on screen and how much sprang from the mind of Walt Disney, but I am willing to bet that Disney endowed this film with plenty. One thing he can definitely be credited for: shrewdly casting Julie Andrews in her first leading role, after the much ballyhooed fallout from "My Fair Lady", Andrews was a star waiting to happen, and Disney rolled the dice by putting an otherwise unproven box office draw in his lavish and extremely expensive production. Walt Disney's imagination is definitely the showcase here, but so much of this movie is perfect, specifically the casting of Dick Van Dyke as jack-of-all-trades Bert, David Tomlinson as the frustrated Banks patriarch, and Jane Darwell, in her last role, as the "bird woman", and the Sherman Brothers wonderful score. So many of these songs are still used today in children's videos and materials, not to mention frequently revived for various Disney endeavors. "Step in Time", "Spoonful of Sugar", "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", "Let's Go Fly a Kite", "Jolly Holliday" and "Chim Chim Cheree" are some of my personal favorites. To fully discuss a movie like this, with so many little asides, gags, and spurts of imagination, let alone the bravura set pieces like the extended scene within the chalk painting, and the knockout song-and-dance number on the rooftops of London at the end of the film, would require much more space than I have here. To anyone who has not seen this film then, let this be a hearty recommendation, and to those who have, simply a recounting of how "practically perfect" it is.

As the film opens Bert introduces us to Cherry Tree Lane, where the unhappy Banks' household is. Mr. Banks is a grumpy, exasperated father of two, who has no time for his children and devotes all of his attention to pleasing his impossible bosses at the Bank. Mrs. Banks is a little more sympathetic than Mr. Banks, but she too virtually ignores her children, spending her time marching and rallying for womens' suffrage. Viewing this from high above London on a cloud is Mary Poppins, and she descends with quite a flourish, blowing away the multitude of nannies who have lined up at the Banks' house to assume responsibility of Jane and Michael. Mary Poppins barely gives Mr. Banks a moment to speak and before he can protest any further she is sliding up the bannister, to the shock of the children. Mary Poppins immediately dazzles the children with her tricks, pulling potted plants and 5 foot tall lamps out of her hand bag, and making beds make themselves and toys put themselves away simply by snapping her fingers. But nothing the children see prepares them for or could compare to their leap into a chalk drawing. Together with Bert, the amiable renaissance man who befriends the children, the quartet leap into Bert's drawing of an idyllic country setting, enjoying a ride on a merry go-round, dancing with penguin waiters, and partcipating in a fox hunt come horse race, which of course Mary Poppins wins.

The second half of the film is a bit darker, as Mary Poppins' real motive becomes apparent: she appeared to help reunite the Banks family, not to be the children's permenant nanny. After a series of emotional and intense episodes, Mary Poppins heartbreaking song "Feed the Birds", the children go to work with their father, inadvertently cause a panic at the Bank and run away, causing Mr. Banks to be fired and humiliated, the film upticks in grand Disney fashion. Bert finds the children in a dark alley, and together with Mary Poppins takes them on a tour of London from a perspective they never could have imagined: its rooftops. Traveling via staircases made of black smoke the children then are treated to the rousing "11:00 number" "Step in Time" by a multitude of chimney sweeps, which spills down into the living room of the Banks house. By this point Mr. Banks has returned to his home utterly devastated (the scene in which he is dismissed from the bank is almost comical in its cruelty. The bank's cranky manager's son turns Mr. Banks' umbrella inside out, crumples the flower in his lapel and punches a hole through his bowler hat) and wanders into the basement. The children are also depressed because they see the how distraught their father is and because Mary Poppins will be leaving the next morning. When they awake however they get an extremely pleasant surprise: Mr. Banks had spent the entire night in the basement fixing the children's kite and the film ends as the whole family, seemingly the whole of London, goes to fly a kite. Mary Poppins, her work done, takes off in the same way she landed, presumably back to her cloud, waiting to work wonders for another estranged family. And so ends in my opinion the best family film ever.