Mary Poppins (1964, rewatch): Some stunning filmmaking outweighs the flaws

Mary Poppins, 1964, directed by Robert Stevenson, Disney/Buena Vista blu-ray (2013), 3.5 stars.

Several months after the family gathered around the TV one Sunday night in February 1964 to marvel at those Liverpool boys on The Ed Sullivan Show, we piled in the car for a trip to South Twin Drive-In in Mehlville, MO, for a look at another cultural wave-maker.

I don't remember that night with Mary Poppins as vividly as I recall the evening with The Beatles, not even close. All I can really say for sure is that I did see the movie one night six decades ago. Most of the songs from Mary Poppins have stuck with me through the years, but I haven't remembered anything else about it.

Purchase at Amazon

I saw Disney's 50th-anniversary blu-ray on sale at Amazon for about $6 a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to give it a go, mostly to find out if it's still as fantastical as legend has it. I'm happy to say that it is in a couple of segments. I'm unhappy to say that there are a couple of long stretches in this movie that bored me.

Worth the price of admission is a brilliant piece about 20 minutes in length that combines live action with classic Disney animation. Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke sing and dance a couple or three songs with a chorus of penguins, an anthropomorphic fox running from a pack of hunting dogs, some race horses. That bit was jawdropping.

A production number later in the film with Van Dyke and about a dozen of his chimneysweep friends dancing on rooftops also was great.

The problems: Van Dyke's fake cockney accent annoyed the crap out of me. And the character Mr. Banks and his entire plotline, which took up about a third of the movie, irritated me to no end. I couldn't stand that guy.

This was a nostalgia watch for me -- more than anything, I approached it as a historical curiosity. The high points I absolutely loved, the rest I didn't have much use for. On balance, an enjoyable ride. 

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