MARY POPPINS RETURNS (O-RVZ MOVIE REVIEW)

Mary Poppins Returns is a musical fantasy film and is the sequel to the classic Disney's film "Mary Poppins" which released last 1964. The story is based on a series of children's book titled Mary Poppins and the film story sets twenty-four years later after Mary Poppins visited the Banks family for the first time and became the nanny of Michael and Jane from the original film. This time, Mary Poppins returns once again to help the Banks family with Michael and Jane as grown-ups. The film is directed by Rob Marshall and stars Emily Blunt taking the mantle as Mary Poppins, along with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Colin Firth, and Meryl Streep. Before I watched this film, I must admit that I have never seen the original film prior to this. I never had an idea why this Mary Poppins was considered to be a classic and as much as I love movies, I didn't really bother to check this one out. Granted, I should have checked that movie but it doesn't mean that if you're a fan of movies, you need to watch everything that has come out. At the end of the day, it will still go down with your own preferences and at that time, Mary Poppins wasn't in my list. But now here we are, a new sequel has come up and yes, I guess it was time to check the original movie out. My review would not be filled with nostalgic moments since I just had it watched today but the original film was really pretty fun to watch. Though my short take on that is that there is no quite coherent direction of its storyline but the adventures and song sequences were really entertaining. Also, given by the year that the original film was made, I think that the practical and some of the special effects were ahead of that time because today, it's still really good to look at. Speaking on the newest film, Emily Blunt really did a good job of portraying Mary Poppins and keeping the same spirit that Julie Andrews had provided from the original film. It's as if that the same person had still played Mary Poppins and even the facial structure of Emily Blunt does have some resemblances to Julie Andrews. Unlike the original film, the sequel did tone down a bit for its childlike-fantasy vibe and the sequel does have some seriousness now to its storyline. It has now a definitive storyline and I liked that it mixed with some reality bites to it. It really was a good thing to have that in a film because you will feel more to the story, especially to the characters emotionally. Remember to what I said about the practical and visual effects done on the original film and how good it was? This film has one of the best-looking special effects especially when the real-life actors go to interact with the animated environment that they were in. That specific scene really had me at awe of how gorgeous it was and how smoothly it looks as they incorporated it to the real-life actors that are involved. The songs in the film were really good. Though I kind of liked the original songs more so than this sequel. The new songs were still good but the old ones were really catchy and up to this point, the tunes of it still ringing in my head. It's a happy, light-hearted film and it's like the epitome of what is Disney is, a happy and magical place to be.

OVERALL

MARY POPPINS RETURNS is a good film and I was really entertained by it. The visual and special effects were stunning and amazing and the music and scores were also good. I liked more the story of this film than the original because it has a unified direction to it. I really don't like watching a film without any definitive storyline. Emily Blunt was wonderful playing the classic character Mary Poppins. She had big shoes to fill playing that iconic role but she really knocked it out of the park. Without taking any nostalgic factor, the film really is a solid one. They had doubled the fantasy of it and I was really amused and entertained by the whole film.