Thursday, March 14, 2019

Homeschooling with Teens - Books to Movies: Mary Poppins Returns

I had a chance to watch Disney's Mary Poppins Returns with four of the kids today - my two oldest (ages 19 and 21) and my two youngest (ages 12 and 14).


Even though we'd read that the film is not really a literary adaptation of P.L. Traver's work, the younger girls and I read through the second book from the Mary Poppins series, earlier in the week, just in case...


… and I'm so glad we did.  The magical nanny from the books is quite a bit different than one Julie Andrews brought to life in the original Disney classic (more like Nanny McPhee with a dash of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle).  Somehow though the film-makers managed to capture quite a lot of the tone and content of Traver's story, while still creating what truly feels like a sequel to the first film.

I didn't have high hopes going in.  The cast looked good with Emily Blunt (we loved her in The Devil Wears Prada), Emily Mortimer (a favorite of ours from The Kid), Lin-Manuel Miranda (E is a huge Hamilton fan), Colin Firth (Mr. Darcey!), not to mention Dick Van Dyke, Julie Walters, Angela Lansbury, and Meryl Streep.  I really thought Disney would ruin it though, but they didn't.

It's clean, family friendly, upbeat (even if the opening scenes did cause my oldest to claim he'd gotten soda fizz in his eyes), beautifully filmed, with more than a couple catchy tunes, and just enough of the book to keep it interesting and of the film to keep it light and nostalgically entertaining.

It's one we'll watch again.

2 comments:

Dawn said...

I can't wait for it to get to Redbox on the 22nd. We will be watching it for sure.
Blessings, Dawn

Ticia said...

We went to see it in the theaters for my Mom's birthday. The original is one of her favorites, and mine too. I read all of the books as a kid, and had my kids read the first one before watching the original movie (again) this fall.

The Girl and I listened to the soundtrack to Mary Poppins Returns a bunch as we drove back from Iowa, we watched the movie again with Tara and Josh while we were visiting them.