CineBad!!!

“It’s that Poppins woman again, isn’t it?!” Yes, Mary Poppins is the short-tempered, ugly-hat-wearing, magical nanny that everybody loves. Upon watching this movie for, probably, the twentieth time, I ask myself the question: Is Mary Poppins some sort of supernatural entity, like maybe an Angel or a Fairy, or is she merely an alien? Let’s weigh the evidence:

Mary has all of the physical trappings of a normal human being, although the excessively Victorian way in which she dresses (or I should say, the campy sixties’ version of the Victorian way blah blah blah) would hide any abnormalities around the torso area. Like say, green skin, lack of belly button, stuff like that. Mary also has some sort of anti-gravitational power that allows her to slide up the railings on staircases, which might point to some sort of long-distance space-flight enabling technology. Oh, except she doesn’t have a space ship, merely a magic umbrella (that talks.)

Mary never changes her outfit, which implies that she doesn’t sweat, or get dirty in any other way, and she also has some sort of Jedi-like mind control power which she uses (with smirky delight) on Mr. Banks, the staunch patriarch whom she works for.

Anyway, Mary’s mind power thing obviously works on Matthew Garber (the little boy, who stars alongside Karen Dotrice in all three of her Disney flicks) because he has this goofy, mesmerized look on his face throughout the whole movie. It’s almost, but not quite, as dopey as the look on his face in The Gnome Mobile, except that he basically had no lines in that movie, so there wasn’t a lot for him to do.

Mary’s handbag is also bigger on the inside than on the outside, which is kind of like Dr. Who, and in one scene, she sings to a robotic bird that’s perched on her finger. So she’s definitely in the high-technology realm. Although, Mary’s sidekick Bert (the friendly chimney-sweep) is definitely a bit of a fairy, so it’s likely that there’s some connection there. Maybe I should read the book that this movie was based on. It might give me further insight.

Anyway, I figure just about everyone alive has seen this movie. The plot is fairly predicable, so I won’t go into details here. Mary Shows up one day to rescue to bored kids whose parents have no time for them. Mary guilt-trips the parents into spending time with their kids, and then everyone is happy, blah blah blah. Along the way, there’s lots of singing, dancing, and blue screen.

If you haven’t seen this movie, well you just don’t know from Disney, boy.

This movie has just about every gratuitous Disney trick in the book. There’s dancing cartoon penguins, interminable musical numbers, weird flouncy costumes in irritating colors… the whole nine. I would heartily recommend this film. It’s not the sort of cheese that I could sit around a make fun of, yet is is highly cheesy. I also have the soundtrack to this movie on vinyl, which can really kill the mood at cocktail parties.