J. Hope

First, the movie is LONG. without previews it's over 2 hours long. for kids in my opinion, it's too long. the movie was different than the orginal in these ways. Its scary and dark in several scenes. I understand it was rated PG, but, unlike the original, it has several truly scary scenes. it also touched on many heavy subjects. death, loss of security, nightmares, lying and deceit. also, there were many scenes where the father was very angry with his children. the orginal Mary Poppins did have a few scenes like this, but, it was more of a snip than a rant. the overall movie aesthetically was dark. as in the lighting, coloring, gray skies, etc. then there were moments of polar opposite brightness, color, cheery songs. however, it was maybe 30% happy and 70% dark or low/sad. there were points where the movie seemed to drag and the storyline would go over a 7 or 8 year olds head. mostly in regards to the songs. the songs were used to guide the characters to dealing with the perils in the storyline and were not straightforward. that's fine for an older viewer but for those that are younger I feel it left the scary parts more prominent. I went with 4 total adults and 6 children. the acting was great. the happy parts were cute, but too few. overall I was disappointed because I thought the movie would be fun and uplifting. we left with many of the children frightened and my daughter fearing she would have nightmares. my daughter is not easily frightened. I feel like Mary Poppins Returns was geared towards those that watched Mary Poppins as a child and are now adults and missed the mark for those that may be children watching for the first time.