Mary Poppins (1964)
Directed by Robert Stevenson
In turn of the century London, a magical nanny employs music and adventure to help two neglected children become closer to their father.
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What critics compared Mary Poppins to
The plot is all predictable, broad-strokes stuff — I mean, it’s basically Mary Poppins meets E.T. meets 101 Dalmatians, but with a talking bear — but the inspired comic setpieces set the movie apart.
Paddington (nicely rendered in CGI) is taken in by the Brown family (which may remind more mature viewers of the Banks clan in “ Mary Poppins ”), over the objections of Mr. Brown ( Hugh Bonneville ), a somewhat officious risk analyst.
Sally Hawkins plays the kindly Mrs. Brown, Hugh Bonneville her joyless husband (a role akin to George Banks in "Mary Poppins") and the great Julie Walters sauces up the role of Mrs. Bird, the family's housekeeper.
The Browns’ West London terrace home (with its interior cherry-tree fresco that seems an oblique nod to “Mary Poppins”) is an ever-unfolding designer’s delight.
One location calls to mind the elaborate, dazzling interiors of the Harry Potter films without feeling out of place or breaking things; the rest of the movie presents a comfortable and clean London, recalling the obviously set-bound Mary Poppins both in its stagey artifice and its appropriate softness.
In writer-director King's film, the adoptive human family Paddington finds is played by Hugh Bonneville (Mr. Brown, here a stuffy risk analyst recalling Mr. Banks of "Mary Poppins"), Sally Hawkins (Mrs.
But Gunn really excels in icing his cake, references to 'Cheers,' Pac-Man and "Mary Poppins" not only amusing but integral, much like the juvenile name calling that occurs throughout.
References and allusions flow freely, as Quill again makes references to the Earth pop culture he remembers, leading to a pretty spectacular cameo, and maybe the best Mary Poppins joke ever.
Given Galaxy’s fondness for pop culture of the not-too-distant past — the new movie hinges on the 1972 single “ Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl” ) and drops in references to Mary Poppins, Heather Locklear and Pac-Man — this is not too crazy a suggestion.
…namechecks Knightrider, Cheers and, with one eye on the forthcoming Disney sequel, Mary Poppins, it’s curiously coy when it comes to talking about its real Dad, The Empire Strikes Back.
Released by Disney in the US, it feels very close in spirit (and 'oi guv'nor' vision of London) as, say, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Mary Poppins.
We open in a Mary Poppins-style version of London where past and present seem to intermingle.
Rylance gives the BFG a lanky, loose-limbed quality, not unlike the one Dick Van Dyke gives his dance-hall chimney sweeper in “Mary Poppins.”
Somewhere deep in the movie's genetic structure is a chromosome or two of Rocky and Bullwinkle's bi-level wit mixed in with the DNA of Mary Poppins.
Andrews, of course, played the title nanny in the studio's Mary Poppins, which contains the famous phrase "practically perfect in every way."
As far back as 1964, Mary Poppins and its charismatic star Julie Andrews bridged the animation/reality divide with a musical that truly was magical.
"Mary Poppins": The voice of the narrator is that of Julie Andrews, who played the title role in the 1964 classic.
“Enchanted” is more on the order of “Mary Poppins”: magical, endearing, funny to both kids and adults, and featuring a star-making performance.
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Screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman (their third collaboration, following Juno and Young Adult) revisit Mary Poppins by way of bleary-eyed Middle America, substituting the idea that life gets better – or love means sacrifice – for a childish fantasy involving the healing powers of a 20-something, Greta Gerwig-type free spirit.
She’s a sort-of hipster Mary Poppins in a crop-top.
Davis has to be Tully’s version of Mary Poppins, an nearly magical entity that attempts to fix the family she’s caring for.
On the surface, this is a cross between Mary Poppins and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, so from the very start there's a sense that there's something wrong about Tully.
Tully is Mary Poppins for the modern age, an unflinchingly realistic examination on the struggles of being a mother, and what giving a life can do to yourself, both physically and mentally.
Like other films produced by DreamWorks and Aardman Animation (Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), Flushed Away is loaded with groan-worthy puns ("Pardon me, my fly's undone," says The Toad when an insect he swallowed tries to escape) and pop-culture references (I spotted nods to James Bond, Superman, The Fly, Batman, Lady and the Tramp, Finding Nemo and Mary Poppins, among others), and it playfully mocks horror-movie clichés, as well (the old fisherman who takes Roddy to the docks where Rita can be found speaks into a bottle to make his voice echo).
Oddly, the most notable additions are the wonderful character of Aunt Millicent (the always marvelous Lynn Redgrave); a touching, last-moment adoption of a Lost Boy who is straight out of an early talkie Our Gang short, Small Talk; and plot devices lifted from the film of Mary Poppins.
Mary Poppins has often been suggested as Walt Disney's favorite amongst all the many films he produced in his 65 years of life; whether that's so, it certainly remains one of the best films ever produced by his company, indeed one of the best American films of the 1960s, just about the only film that can be idly compared to The Wizard of Oz as a masterpiece of family cinema, in terms of its technical ambition, emotional honesty, joyous energy, and glorious soundtrack (to me, Mary Poppins vies with only Pinocchio and Beauty and the Beast and perhaps The Little Mermaid as having the best songs of any Disney feature).
It’s the best of the first wave of Disney live-action features, and the most complete and satisfying musical of any kind that the studio produced until Beauty And The Beast came along.
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The music certainly doesn't rival Gigi (1958) or Mary Poppins (1964).
Hugh Dancy stars as Mortimer Granville, the Victorian doctor who patented the first electromagnetic vibrator, and Maggie Gyllenhaal—in a performance she seems to have modeled on Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins—is the charming proto-suffragette who wins his heart.