Six performers from the 1964 Mary Poppins film appear in the new movie Mary Poppins Returns: Karen Dotrice, Dick Van Dyke.....and four dancing penguins. Lin-Manuel Miranda plays a lamplighter and Emily Blunt is Mary Poppins. The two stars don't have quite the same charm and chemistry that Van Dyke and Julie Andrews had in the original film -- but Miranda's Cockney accent isn't as exaggerated as Van Dyke's was. All the songs were written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. The standouts are Nowhere To Go But Up, Trip A Little Light Fantastic and the tear-jerking ballad The Place Where Lost Things Go.
It's impossible to not compare the 2018 film with the 1964 film. If I judge Mary Poppins Returns on its own merits, I would rate it a 10. If I compare it to Mary Poppins, I would give it a 9. Look carefully at the scene of Michael Banks in his attic and you'll see the blocks that spelled the name of Mary Poppins in the original film. (Reproductions, actually; the original blocks are stored at the Disney archives in Burbank.)


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