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…

The post #11 Mary Poppins (1964) appeared first on Welcome to Oaty McLoafy!.

Since I own this on blu-ray, it was easy to track down and watch again for the like hundredth enjoyable time.

The case for Bedknobs and Broomsticks being one of the BEST musicals of all time:

1. This musical is set during one of the most fucking dark times of human history, and it does this strange thing of presenting the harsh reality of the war contrasted with the struggle of trying to maintain some type of normalcy when everything is going to shit.  It takes place during World War 2 during the invasion of England, and the first scene is of a man painting over the street signs so the Nazis would get lost.  Miss Price (Angela Lansbury), a satisfied single woman living her best kid-free life in a house on the countryside, is training to be a witch through a correspondence course, so she can use her powers to help the war effort.  She is forced to house 3 children from London to keep them safe while Nazis are literally bombing the city.  In fact, later in the movie, they travel to London (via bed, because of course), and they find out that the man Miss Price has been corresponding with, Mr. Browne, is squatting in an abandoned mansion because there is an unexploded bomb in the front yard.  And if that wasn’t enough, in the climax of the film, all the main characters chase off invading Nazis with enchanted suits of armor.  As a child, this whole scene was so unbelievably creepy to me – moving suits of armor that are completely hollow inside swinging medieval weapons at Nazi solders.  It felt like zombies were marching across the fields and I still love it.  What kind of kids movie does this?!

I know what you’re thinking, and no, the Sound of Music does not do this.  It’s all “my dad might bang my nanny!” and “my boyfriend might be a National Socialist” until they have to run from the Nazis at the end.  Literally everything in Bedknobs and Broomsticks comes as a result of the war.

2. The songs are fire.  You cannot tell me that once you hear “Eglantine”, or “Substitutiary Locomotion”, that they won’t be stuck in your head the rest of the day.  Not to mention “The Beautiful Briny Sea” is just a fun green screen romp with a bunch of animated fish.  Watching Miss Price and Mr. Browne dance on the sea floor cracks me up every single time.  The way Angela Lansbury paddles her little feet, it kills me.

Angela Lansbury is just a musical treasure, I love her so much.

Does the movie use the musical numbers in a unique or groundbreaking way?  No, but I think that’s fine.  I don’t even mind when they introduced the “Portobello Road” number to clearly stretch the runtime of the movie, because it’s just fun to watch.  The only song I could live without is “The Age of Not Believing”, because it’s nothing special, and does nothing to move the plot forward or entertain anybody.  Charlie’s inability to believe in magical things starts and ends with the song.

3. For 1971 special effects, it’s extremely charming.  I like that they’re on a strange acid trip when the bed travels, and it sparkles as it disappears and reappears.  Same with the never ending parade of people and animals Miss Price turns into rabbits.  As a kid, I could not, for the life of me, figure out how all these objects just moved by themselves.  They gave empty suits of armor personalities when they were, you know, fighting Nazis.  When they all deflate like bagpipes at the end :chefs kiss:

The mix of live action and animation is satisfactory, although I could live without the entire soccer game.  The fact they call it soccer when it takes place in England is just so bizarre to me.  The uselessness of this scene is only highlighted later on in the movie, when you find out they didn’t need to go there in the first place.

4. I think this movie doesn’t get the credit its due because it will forever live in the shadow of Mary Poppins.  While there are similarities in the premise of a magical woman taking care of children that aren’t hers (and they happen to take a trip to an animated magical land where animals dance), the core of the movie is much different.  Instead of a magical nanny bringing a family back together, it’s about learning to create your own family, even in the most dire of circumstances.  Miss Price and Mr. Browne were not intending to become parents, and were content on hacking it on their own, but throughout the film they discovered that human connections were something they wanted, and it was more important to maintain those than their own selfish pursuits.  Bedknobs and Broomsticks is about a group of strangers learning how to make meaningful and supportive connections with each other, and I think that’s adorable.

Oh, and it’s also about kicking Nazis.

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