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Mary Poppins
Reviewer: Alyice Edrich
The Movie
Mary Poppins, 1964
The PlotTwo children, leaving with two self-absorbed parents, scare off every Nanny their parents hire in hopes of finding a Nanny that would love them as her own children.
Starring
Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns, Karen Dotrice, Mathew Garber, and more.
Review
I don’t remember watching Mary Poppins when I was a child, but I do remember the first time each of my children watched it. With each child, the story of Mary Poppins grew dearer and dearer to my heart. As if the excitement in their eyes as the magical world unfolded wasn’t enough to cause me to buy the VHS (yes, that was before DVDs), their innate desire to rehearse and practice the songs and dance moves until they got them right surely was! I remember those years with great fondness. And I’ll never forget how stuck they were on the word, supercalifragilistic, and how proud of themselves they were for not only being able to say the word but repeat it extremely fast and eventually, spell it!
Fast forward seven years. Yes, it’s been at least seven years since my youngest, now 14, has seen the film. When I heard it was coming back on DVD, having missed the first run, I asked my daughter if she remembered the film and she surprisingly, she did. She immediately went straight to her favorite word from the film, supercalifragilistic, and began singing part of the song, as though she, herself, had just walked down memory lane. That’s when I knew I had to get the DVD version; after all, our VHS version was worn out.
The film starts out in 1910, London with the Banks family. There’s Mrs. Banks who spends every waking moment thinking and breathing the Women’s Rights Movement. Then there’s Mr. Banks, who cannot think about anything else but running his life as efficiently as possible—“for time is money”. Then there are the two overworked house-workers: cook and the maid. And finally, there are the children: Jane and Michael Banks.
On the surface, the children seem like lovely, well-mannered children. But when nobody’s looking, they are very mischievous children who will do anything to make their uncaring, ”its only a job” nannies leave.
After scaring off the last of the Nannies, Mr. Banks comes to the conclusion that his wife is unfit in making such an important decision and is determined to find the perfect Nanny, himself. Only the children have a few suggestions of their own, so they write them down and present their requests to their father—who, of course, considers their requests for someone to love them, to play with them, and to respect them as sure nonsense. He immediately tears up their list and burns it in the fireplace and commences to write his own advertisement for the position.
The next day, a dozen or so, Nannies arrive for the job but soon disappear in a storm that carries them off, as one Nanny is carried in by the storm—it’s Mary Poppins! And she just so happens to have the children’s list of qualifications with her, which just baffles Mr. Banks. But before he can turn Mary Poppins away, she manages to push herself into the position uses the exact sternness Mr. Banks has been looking for in a Nanny.
And that, my dear readers, is where the real magic takes place.
Through a wonderful balance of sternness and tenderness, Mary Poppins teaches the children to take their responsibilities seriously while not forgetting to experience the joy that is life. And in the end, brings the family together in a way the children never thought imaginable.
As parents, our underlying desires are to give our children everything we never had growing up, to make life easier for them, to give them opportunities we never had, to show them just how important and invaluable they are. But sometimes, in our plight to achieve these lofty goals, we get preoccupied with the busyness of life and achieving certain outcomes that we forget why we were doing it all in the first place—we forget why we had children, why we wanted a family of our own, and why nothing of materialism can ever match the richness of our time. Mary Poppins reminds us to take a look at our lives, to see what’s off kilter and to make some changes. Mary Poppins reminds us that it’s okay to be stern at times, but to not forget about the tender side of love, also. And Mary Poppins reminds us that laughter is truly the best medicine!
In this release, the DVD comes with two discs: the film and extras. If you own a VHS version or a recording from the old televised appearance, I’d definitely urge you to buy the DVD if for nothing more than the quality of the imagery. It is truly far superior then my old stand-by, VHS version.
The extras include: Backstage on Broadway which tells you how difficult it was to get the film version onto Broadway; Step-In-Time, an actual clip from the Broadway show which has you wishing Disney would’ve put the entire musical on the disc; Fun-fact pop-ups which allows you to watch the film and have trivia appear during the viewing; a Musical reunion with Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews as they discuss how certain songs came to be, a re-enactment of a song that didn’t make it into the film, Chimpanzoo, using storyboard art; and a short called, The Cat That Looked At A King.
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Disclosure: The reviewer received a complimentary copy of the DVD to review.
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