by Michael P Coleman
Dear Mary Poppins,
It was wonderful to run into you in the neighborhood department store earlier this week, as your most recent feature film, last year’s Mary Poppins Returns, debuts on Blu Ray and DVD. You couldn’t possibly remember me, but I bumped into you twice during the holidays at the local theatre, during your movie’s theatrical run. I had been anxiously awaiting, with each gust of wind, your arrival at home.
Toward the new film’s finale, you rather predictably exclaim, as you had during your 1964 cinematic debut, that you were “practically perfect in every way.” As is rather uncharacteristic of you, you were being a tad modest. Mary Poppins Returns in absolutely perfect in every possible way.
With no disrespect to Julie Andrews, your first celluloid assistant, your new accomplice, Emily Blunt, miraculously does an even finer job of helping to capture the magic, wonder, and utter joy for which you so desperately seem to strive. And the new film’s songs, rather unbelievably, improve upon those in your 1964 feature. All of them, including “Underneath the) Lovely London Sky,” “Trip A Little Light Fantastic,” “A Conversation,” and “The Place Where Lost Things Go” are modern musical masterpieces.
Click here to read MPC’s full letter to Mary Poppins.
