nottryingtobepretentious

[nottryingtobepretentious]

MARY POPPINS RETURNS — SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE

Rating: 1/5 (for Emily Blunt and Emily Blunt only)

On Tuesday, January 1, I paid $12 to have my ears bleed; in other words, I saw Mary Poppins Returns. Here is a limited list of its main issues, though there are many more:

Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hear me out, he’s extremely talented...at writing. If you’ve listened to Hamilton or any of his other musicals, you’d know that. Nonetheless, he's a horrible, truly awful singer—hence my ears’ bleeding. If you’ve listened to Hamilton or any of his other musicals, you’d know that. So you can imagine how difficult it was to sit through two hours of his squawking—oops, singing—and his ungodly, macabre Cockney accent. I don’t think he’s ever heard a British person speak. And he spent five months shooting with Emily Blunt, native Brit, and the rest of the ensemble. I was truly astonished. I guess I should’ve known to expect a subpar performance. Aside from his flaws as a performer, his character was so odd. I was so ready for the poppin’ chimney sweep song and dance from the original, but, again, my low expectations were too optimistic. Miranda plays not a chimney sweep, but a lamp-lighter. Meaning his entire job is to turn a dial on a gas lamp. I don’t know much about maintenance jobs of the British Industrial Revolution, but this can't be comparable to chimney-cleaning. It can’t.

The movie didn’t include any of the original bops like “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” I realized after seeing the movie that this has been advertised in the press, but I, not having kept tabs on the film’s publicity, was unaware of this. A half hour into the movie, the only thing keeping me going was the possibility of hearing Blunt sing an excerpt from “A Spoonful of Sugar.” Realizing it was never going to happen, I sat in agony for the remainder. (The movie is two hours and ten minutes long. That’s 130 minutes, or 7,800 seconds, of agony.) Also, don't get me started on Miranda’s song “(Underneath the) Lovely London Sky.” Blasphemous. Odious. Harrowing.

I’m a big Meryl Streep fan; I have a Meryl prayer candle. Plus, she’s amazing in Mamma Mia, so I was exhilarated upon hearing of her role in this movie-musical extravaganza (hi, Julie Walters and Colin Firth). I feel so wronged. She has five bewilderingly unmemorable minutes of screen time, during which she, perhaps the most obscure character, sings her rushed song in an undistinguishable accent, which was a bit confusing. It seems like the filmmakers just wanted a Meryl cameo—who doesn’t—and decided to put her acting chops to the test by making her sing frantically an accent, all whilst upside down. Don’t ask. Anyway, unrealistically, I was hoping she’d sing “Money, Money, Money.” Was that really too much to ask? The members of ABBA seem nice—they’re Swedish, after all, if you like prescribing stereotypes; I’m sure they’d be fine with her doing an encore. It actually would’ve fit perfectly, considering the film centers on the Banks’ family’s financial struggles. On the same subject, Angela Lansbury was there handing out balloons for some reason, probably because they couldn’t get the original Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews, so they picked The Other Old White Woman. She deserved better.

This last point isn’t really a critique. It’s just something strange. Dick Van Dyke—the original Sir Chimney Sweep—makes a cameo, in which he tap dances on a desk. He’s, like, 90, so this isn’t his fault, but my man just stood on the desk and wiggled a bit while tap dance sound effects played.

I originally ended my review with the image of a white, nonagenarian man with a bad spray tan struggling to regain feeling in his numb legs, but I think I should clarify some things this time. My shock and disgust weren’t borne from a sense of betrayal, or anger at the filmmakers for ruining a beloved childhood film. I liked Mary Poppins when I was young, but it was never a formative film. It doesn’t mean that much to me. I wasn’t even planning on seeing this remake. Sure, I was excited to do an awkward shimmy in my seat to “Chim Chim Cheree,” but that was really it.

Essentially, I’m disgusted.