Mary Poppins Returns: Practically Perfect In Every Way

We all know 2018 has been a rough year. So what better way to end it than with a spoonful of sugar? Starring the bewitchingly delightful Emily Blunt as our favorite nanny, Mary Poppins Returns is everything you need to sit up and smile for a solid two hours. I should know - I went with my friend, Lynsey, who spent the entire film literally squealing with delight.

In this sequel, Mary Poppins returns to help the children of the now grown-up and widowed Michael Banks (played by Ben Whishaw - another delight). He has been struggling to keep the household together since his wife's death, aided by his sister, Jane (Emily Mortimer - yet another delight - notice a pattern?), and trusty housekeeper, Ellen (Julie Walters). Lin-Manuel Miranda is the neighborhood lamplighter, Jack, a former apprentice to Bert the chimney sweep from the prior movie, complete with Cockney accent (less awful than the much maligned Dick van Dyke accent but still dicey). And there are the three adorable children (Nathanael Saleh, Pixie Davies, and Joel Dawson) that Mary Poppins has to teach to use their imagination and put aside grown-up cares to remain children a bit longer.

The movie is a classic Disney romp from start to finish, brimming with brand new musical numbers and catchy choreography courtesy of director Rob Marshall. If you can, I would avoid reading the opening credits, because there are quite a few casting choices up front that are so much more exciting when revealed during the film. When I saw Sandy Powell was the costume designer, I got real excited, and boy, did she not disappoint. There's a sequence in the movie when the characters enter into a 2-D animation world, and the costumes that they are wearing do the most extraordinary job of looking like they're two-dimensional whilst being on three-dimensional humans. I can't quite explain the effect; they look slightly hand-drawn and drop-dead gorgeous.

I can't say the music is something that stuck in my head - there's no Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-esque number that blew my socks off - but Blunt can sing her heart out and of course Miranda can too, so they sell every number. Some of the songs are incredibly moving and sad, whilst others are ribald and slightly scandalous for children - at one point, I wondered if Rob Marshall had forgotten he was directing Mary Poppins and veered off into Cabaret. But the special effects are jawdropping, and even though they're relying on old-school 2-D animation, they've found a miraculous way to blend it seamlessly with the 3-D action. By the end of this movie, you will feel like a little kid again, because you have completely suspended your disbelief and entered the world of your imagination.

Mary Poppins Returns says pish posh to cynicism; instead, every frame is pure joy distilled into its cinematic essence. It is the best Christmas movie you could offer up to yourself this year. We all need to rejoice: let Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda show you how it's done.