Warren Elder

This is how you adapt a classic for the screen! It’s bold and colorful and every scene is perfect. To quote Salieri in Amadeus “displace one phrase and there’d be diminishment, remove one bar and the structure would crumble” exactly what I was hoping for!!

The beauty of the books narrative reduced to a more modern retelling. The Characters seems empty and the editing is odd! The performances largely save for a few of the leads seemed phoned in too! I can’t help comparing Hurt to Peck and well, it’s no competition!! The advances in CGI have meant a better whale but I rather liked the old model, it even has more Character!!!

Starts with a Coen brothers bang and proceeds to lumber and sway in the middle a little. Nice characters, doesn't really know what it it is from time to time!

I've read through a selection of reviews below and have to conclude that I was attending a different Mary Poppins movie! I Thought Emily Blunt was practically perfect in every way, pay tribute without going down the sicofantic route she might have. The movie moves between musical numbers beautifully and the songs are strong and memorable. I've read other reviews that have used words like syrupy and forced, well as far as the syrupy nature of the scripts, absolutely it's Disney and it's Mary Poppins, heck she is asking us to take her with a spoonful of the stuff un the first movie! As for forced, it feels like that at times, but that's the fault of the script writers here not our actors, whom never feel disingenuous actually with the fantasy. I enjoyed Mary Poppins returns as did my 8 yr old, I definately had a lump in the throat when Mary came floating into shot and cried several times throughout the movie. Colin Firth was great, Dick Van Dyke necessary to bring us home and the children were very good! 4/5