Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: New Mary Poppins

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Posted by Terry Monohan (Member # 8285) on 12-25-2018, 08:11 PM:

Went to see the new Disney Mary Poppins on Christmas Eve at the Scotts Valley Cinema near Santa Cruz CA in auditorium #8. Nice wide semi curved scope screen, good stereo sound.
They fixed the surround sound from my last visit.
The new 'Mary' seemed very stiff and she only had 4 color changes of outfit the whole movie.
I knew from the start titles that It would be a not so hot sequel.
The titles were just on a painted art background.
The music songs except for the bath tub and balloon numbers put me to sleep.
The middle of the new 'Mary' film dragged in many places.
The worst was all the kids running all the time going to the candy counter or bathroom. The management needs to put signs on the walls 'CHILDREN NO RUNNING PLEASE' This cinema was remodeled with semi stadium seats on a slope and It's just plywood on the floor. Very noisy at times. A little kid behind me was slurping so load on his straw for about 45 minutes till I turned around and told the parents.
Try not to compare to the original Mary Poppins as It is a different movie.
A few of my friends liked Poppins but I did not like It.
Disney must be upset as 'Aquaman' did better at the boxoffice opening week. The SF Chronicle guy did not give 'Poppins' a good review. Little kids don't read critic columnist reviews so they will enjoy It I guess.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-30-2018, 11:20 PM:

Well, obviously you don't "get" what this movie was trying to accomplish. let's just take your points one by one:

quote: Terry Monohan
The new 'Mary' seemed very stiff and she only had 4 color changes of outfit the whole movie.

(1) She's a nanny, she's not a fashion model, so maybe she doesn't HAVE all that many outfits. (2) The whole story takes place over just a handful of days, maybe all in one weekend, so how many clothing changes did you want? (3) She seemed "stiff" because that's her style. In the original film, Julie Andrews played the character somewhat sweeter than Emily Blunt plays it -- she has said she tried to make the character a little closer to what she was in the books.

[/quote]I knew from the start titles that It would be a not so hot sequel.
The titles were just on a painted art background.[/quote]

That was quite obviously a tribute to the style of the original movie. Everything from the paintings, to the font used, to the very fact that the movie had a traditional old-fashioned credit sequence up front was an effort to make it fit as a companion to the old film...not come off like a 2018 action movie. I wish more movies had "opening credits."

quote: Terry Monohan
The music songs except for the bath tub and balloon numbers put me to sleep.

Well, that's just your musical taste. Can't really argue about that one. I thought the songs were very good, especially the opening one and "Nowhere to Go But Up" at the end. The only one I really didn't like was the Meryl Streep number ("Turning Turtle"). They could have left that part out of the movie.

quote: Terry Monohan
The middle of the new 'Mary' film dragged in many places.

I don't think it dragged, but it did seem a little long. They could have cut the above-mentioned Meryl Streep song and made the whole thing a little snappier. That was my only complaint about the movie really.

quote: Terry Monohan
Try not to compare to the original Mary Poppins as It is a different movie.

Of COURSE it is a different movie, ya dope ya! It's a sequel. It's set 25 years after the first one. If they'd made a shot-for-shot remake you'd probably be griping about them not showing any originality.

quote: Terry Monohan
Disney must be upset as 'Aquaman' did better at the boxoffice opening week.

No, this movie was not designed as an opening-weekend blockbuster the way the superhero movies are. They were expecting $25 to $30 million for the first week and that's just about what they got. This movie will hold up well over the next couple of weeks -- in fact our boxoffice this past weekend is a little more than last weekend's was.

Around here we've been experiencing very little up-n-down traffic from the kids, except for during the song "Where the Lost Things Go," which is too bad because that's an emotional high point of the film....but the kids get bored these days if something's not happening every two seconds. Makes me wonder if they even know what's going on -- if they did, they wouldn't leave during that scene.

Overall I thought the movie was really good and word of mouth has been terrific. I thought all the little instrumental nods to the original songs in the soundtrack were really cool. Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury were great in their cameo roles. The principals all came off just right as compared to the first film. And Emily Blunt was about as perfect for the title role as anybody could be.

So given my one gripe about the Meryl Streep song, I'd rate this one 3.5 out of 5 stars.

(Correct title for search bait: Mary Poppins Returns)

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 12-31-2018, 09:25 AM:

Didn't see it, no reason to. But at 2:10 mins, of course you are going to have kids running in and out.

My non-scientific survey of children's matinees we've run every summer for 30+ years is no kids shows should be longer than 90mins (which includes the insufferably long credits and songs at the end).

And if you have an audience full of 10 year old boys you can pretty much set your watch on them being out at the 45min mark.

Granted Mary Poppins Bloody Revenge is targeted at old people who want to impose their nostalgia on their grandchildren, and so will skew the audience much older, but kids will be kids.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 12-31-2018, 09:59 AM:

quote: Martin McCaffery
Didn't see it, no reason to.

" Ditto"

- - I even turned down the opportunity to work a screening of it,
and I certainly wouldn't pay to see it.
( I don't think I've paid to see a movie in over 20yrs, and
I'm not going to break that streak with THIS one.)

Posted by James Biggins (Member # 8574) on 12-31-2018, 10:34 AM:

Mike's critique of Terry's review is spot-on. I would agree that we could have done without the Meryl Streep number, but otherwise I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I expected to.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-07-2019, 10:58 PM:

After hearing this movie every night for the past (almost) 3 weeks, I am still enjoying listening to it. Several of the songs are absolute "ear worms" and stick with you if you give them a chance.

Some of the professional reviewers labeled the new songs as "forgettable" or otherwise not as good as the songs from the first movie... well, how can you top "Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious" anyway? But one thing I've noticed, after thinking about some of those old songs, is the melody lines in some of these new tunes are often much more complex than the old songs were....maybe that's why the reviewers didn't like them; it takes a little time for those complicated melodies to sink in.

Another thing I really liked about this movie was, there was absolutely no set-up for another sequel. In the first film, "Bert" the chimney sweep says "Goodbye, Mary Poppins...don't stay away too long." So I was really expecting something like that at the end of this movie, but there was nothing at all. (Considering it IS Disney, though, it's very likely the cast had sequel options in their contracts!)

Anyway, lots of "rave" reviews from this corner of the world and although the crowds are diminishing fast now, it's still holding up decently considering school is back in session.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 01-28-2019, 12:51 PM:

It's a nice movie, and I like it a lot more than I expected to. But unfortunately there aren't many people coming to see it. It could be partly the fault of the weather, though, since it's been really cold and people tend to not want to leave their cars on the street to freeze up for a couple of hours when they're at the movie.

It seems to be a kids movie for old people; what crowd I do get is mostly people over about 50, and there are very few kids.

Everyone seems to really like it, though. One very old lady said "It was just as magical as the first one".

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-04-2019, 11:24 PM:

My wife and I took our two-year old son to see this on Sunday - his first time in a movie theater. I was very skeptical as to whether he'd be able to make it through a movie this long without melting down or falling asleep, but he did.

Nothing really to fault it in terms of production values or craft skills. I thought the Meryl Streep character was actually a male actor in drag until the end credits corrected that impression, and it also seemed to me that Emily Blunt probably wasn't that good a dancer: in the big choreographed numbers, whenever it looked like she was about to do something seriously acrobatic, there was a cut to a close-up of her face (especially the Music Hall number). I almost wonder if the original choreography was over ambitious, resulting in a Plan B involving retakes and clever editing.

However - and I'm conscious that I'm sailing close to the wind for this forum - it was the politically correct propaganda that really spoiled it for me. First, there was the toxic masculinity theme. The only leadership role models shown are female, and the main male characters are all shown as having major flaws: a head-in-the-clouds artist who is incapable of providing for his family (and who realizes towards the end that "they [his children] have been looking after me,") a low-skilled worker with no ambition besides lighting lamps, and villains. The one exception to that was the Dick Van Dyke character who appears at the end, but he was only on the screen for a minute or two.

Then, there was a smattering of what I presume are supposed to be Afro-Caribbean (given that the film is set in London) faces in supporting roles (e.g. the banker's secretary, and one of the slimy attorneys). If it is supposed to be set in the 1930s (an opening title stating that we are in "The Great Slump" implies this, though the exact time period of the film is left deliberately vague), then there simply wasn't any significant Afro-Caribbean community in London until the Empire Windrush arrived in 1948. So the presence of these characters is an anachronism which shows that either the scriptwriters couldn't even get their basic research right, or PC propaganda.

These are but two examples of the political agenda of the filmmakers and the studio being rammed down the audience's throat. For a movie intended for adult audiences, I'd have less of a problem, as they can make an informed decision to take it or leave it. But inflicting it on children, and especially the feminist, men are all useless and/or bad guys theme, is something that will make me think twice about taking my son to see another Disney movie (at least, one that was made later than around 2000).

On a positive, note the presentation, in Screen 13 at the Harkins in Redlands, CA, was as good as it's possible to get in a chain 'plex. The illumination was even and adequate (no hot spots), sharp focus across the screen, the audio tune and level was nice (crisp HF, resonant bass, nothing shrill or boomy, loud enough to grab your attention but not loud enough to upset young children), the auditorium was very clean and comfortable, and the staff we encountered were all polite, outgoing, well presented, and enthusiastic. Add to that no problems parking and almost no standing in line (though the fact that we went on Superbowl Sunday probably had something to do with that), and the theater gets absolutely full marks.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 02-24-2019, 06:43 AM:

MARY POPPINS 2 is to MARY POPPINS, as 2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT is to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY -- thoroughly njoyable, good production values and story, but it's no MARY POPPINS.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 02-27-2019, 03:02 PM:

I love musicals but even this I thought was overkill with all the singing and dancing - please, not another ... uhp they're at it again...

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 03-03-2019, 12:51 AM: