Erica Alexis

Awful except for a few of the fantasy sequences, Colin Firth’s wonderful portrayal of the heartless villain, as well as lively and lovely cameos featuring Angela Lansbury and Dick Van Dyke. Emily Blunt did not inhabit the title role (was perhaps not allowed to?) and failed to communicate the immense underlying warmth and charm of the original title character which made Mary Poppins attractive to audiences in the first place. In fact, the lead seemed to be the character of JACK, played with scenery chewing chops by the talented fellow from Hamilton who got more songs, dialogue and scenes than Ms. Blunt as Mary Poppins! The filmmaker whose previous work I have greatly admired, tries to patch over this disjointed effort’s many flaws by throwing at us what amounts to sheer spectacle. As a result what remains onscreen is a hodge podge of unrealized characters, unmemorable music (nothing from the original was used), trite imagery borrowed from other films and sadly, the worst tropes of musical theater. I was prepared to love this film since I love the director and Emily Blunt also the original Mary Poppins but I did not.