Mary Poppins Returns - Review Thread

Much like the original, Mary Poppins Returns is a celebration of whimsy and happiness, and it gets the job done in that respect. This is a movie driven more by music and feeling, but that's mostly okay. First things first, Emily Blunt absolutely crushes it in the title role. Her performance honors that of Julie Andrews without outright copying it, and Blunt leaves just enough room for herself to add her own touch. The rest of the cast, from Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer to Lin Manuel-Miranda, are also uniformly solid and bring equal amounts of charm to the film. Meryl Streep, however, feels absolutely wasted and her scene/song seems utterly pointless and only included because maybe she and Rob Marshall are very close friends. Speaking of pointless though...look, I understand that Mary Poppins isn't supposed to have an overly complex story or anything, but the way this film resolves its main conflict toward the end indeed begs the question, "So what was the point of these side adventures?" As for the songs, they're good and certainly work within the context of the film, but I'm not sure how many of them will prove to be all that memorable. That's not necessarily a knock against them, but none of them really stand out as the next Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious or Let's Go Fly A Kite.