Geneffa Jonker

Considered for its own merit, Mary Poppins Returns achieves a technical mastery and artistic whimsy ready to amaze and amuse the 21st century viewer, but viewed through the lens of nostalgia, it is doubly winsome. This sequel echoes the former and achieves a lovely symmetry without being predictable or derivative. Despite a few odd choices (MP popping wheelies and the Russian Turtle lady pulling an about-face more dizzying than her subterranean acrobatics), the film manages to build and sustain an emotional pitch that rings authentic, wonderfully supported by simple but soulful songs of loss and resilience. This heft is balanced by toe-tapping numbers, pulled off by a group of lamp-lighting leeries led by former chimney sweep Jack (Lin Manuel Miranda), and a bookworm's burlesque that tells the true story behind the tales. The musical score is bound to be downloaded and replayed by families with as much enthusiasm as we once wore out our cassette tapes replaying supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Most magical to me, however, was the presence of multi-racial talent, inhabiting a world where a Latinx man can sing an ode to the London sky while a dark-skinned Black man plays the "good" lawyer. Watching the original film as a child, the very idea of a person of color inhabiting that world was as improbable as jumping into a chalk drawing. On those grounds alone, Mary Poppins' return is an improvement--showing me yet again how the impossible can be possible.