Critics reviews

Lacking Julie Andrews’s enigmatic blue-eyed calm and genuinely lovely soprano as the original Mary, Blunt (named after a truncheon?) seems little more than a schoolmarm martinet.

It’s all heartwarming fare of the finest variety, with enjoyably anarchic flights of fantasy interspersed with Mary’s brisk wisdom – and which crucially manages to keep all whispers of cynicism at bay.

Mary Poppins Returns propels the Banks family and its nonpareil nanny on so many gusts of poignant, humorous invention that it leaves not just the cast but any non-Grinch audience floating merrily in mid-air.

Marshall, to his credit, knows that anyone who was affected by the earlier film is likely to approach this one with caution, if not outright hostility. He and Beebe take care to honor the look of the original, particularly in the movie’s dazzling centerpiece, the “Cover Is Not the Book” number, a blend of live action and 2D animation that’s almost hallucinatory in its festooned excess—I mean that as a compliment.

Bathed in nostalgia, “Mary Poppins Returns” is being framed as a homage, and there’s clearly some love here. Mostly, it is a modest update, one that has brushed off the story, making it louder, harsher, more aggressively smiley.

It’s been a long, anxious year, and all we ask is a warm blanket of family entertainment, a nice place to go with our kids or parents or grandparents some chilly afternoon after the presents are opened and the latkes consumed. Mary Poppins Returns delivers on all those fronts except maybe one.