I’m still mentally processing The Saddest Music in the World, so instead let’s spend the week with flying nannies, shall we?
Keeping up the long tradition of adoring Dame Julie Andrews, let’s enjoy her debut role in Mary Poppins, in which she is practically perfect in every way.
Dick Van Dyke and his cringe-worthy accent introduce us to the two Banks children, Jane and Michael. They have a mother distracted by smashing the patriarchy, and a father who revels in doing his best Henry Higgins impression. The children are instead raised by a series of nannies that somehow are dumb enough to get consistently bamboozled by two children under the age of 8.
When a opening for a new nanny arises, Mrs. Banks delegates posting the position to her husband, since he insists he can take a break from talking about how much he loves his country and his routine long enough to handle something as simple as hiring a nanny. Mary Poppins applies for the job, fast talks her way into the Banks’ lives, and immediately heads upstairs to win the children over with a series of parlor tricks.
FUN FACT: Julie Andrews did all of that whistling, because she is a queen.
After knowing the children for about thirty minutes, she abandons them in a chalk painting so she can watch her boyfriend dance around with penguins.
Also, this is what happens when you talk about your many, many sexual conquests in front of your current girlfriend.
When they do meet up with the children again, Mary inadvertently joins the pursuit of an aggressively Irish fox, and then enters a horse race, which she wins, because of course she does. She celebrates by singing a bunch of nonsense that will be stuck in our heads for the next 50 years.
FUN FACT: Julie Andrews used to impress the children actors on The Sound of Music set by saying supercalifragilisticexpialidocious backwards.
While Mary Poppins takes the children on a series of interesting errands, their father is increasingly annoyed that someone other than him is making their household pleasant. Mary casually hints that maybe parenting would be a good way to get into his kids good graces, and manipulates him into taking Jane and Michael to work, because banks are super interesting to children. Unsurprisingly, the children are more concerned with feeding the birds because Mary brainwashed them by singing a little ditty. Instead they are forced to listen to their father and his coworkers wax poetic about imperialism and slavery.
In response, Jane and Michael start a riot, and flee the bank in order to avoid their father’s wrath. They get lost and run head-first into Bert on his way to his 7th or 8th part-time gig. They communicate what happened, and Bert surprisingly takes Mr. Banks side, because he’s just a cog in *the system*.
“Hey kids, did you know your father is a victim of capitalism? You think it’s easy having your household pander to your every whim? It’s not all stealing money from your children, wearing a carnation boutonniere and acting all holier-than-thou – Mr. Banks has it tough. Some white men yelled at him once! Have a heart!”
When Bert returns the children to their home, their mother, in her infinite wisdom, thinks he looks legit enough to watch her offspring until Mary Poppins returns. He takes them on an excursion to the roof, which is all fun and games until their elderly ship captain neighbor shoots cannonballs at them because he thinks they’re black. I’m not kidding.
When Mr. Banks and his bizarre mustache come home after spending his day not nearly concerned enough with where his children wandered off to, Bert kindly suggests that maybe Mr. Banks should pay attention more to his family. Mr. Banks takes this advice to heart even though Bert is an unrelated chimney sweep, and presumably because he’s a dude.
Mr. Banks tackles this issue head-on by traveling to his place of employment and murdering his boss by telling him a bad joke. He then returns to his family and manically dances and sings his way into their hearts again because he’s so happy he’s been fired. He gets rehired not 2 minutes later, but that’s fine because his boss is dead. The end.
Now to prepare myself for another famous Disney remake sequel, Mary Poppins Returns…