Review of Mary Poppins (1964) by Russell S — 25 Dec 2016

Among the special effects showcased here are flying sequences (and lots of them) a seemingly bottomless bag, steps made from chimney smoke, toys tidying themselves up in stop-motion and the iconic sequence where Mary Poppins, Bert and the Banks children enter a chalk drawing and interact with a wide variety of animated animals. It may be easy to figure out how these effects are done now, but this adds to their charm, as we see how much effort and expertise went into making these at a time when Computer Generated Images did not exist.

There are 13 songs, including "Feed the Birds", "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocus" and "Step in Time". In addition, some of the songs (such as Burt's song "Chim Chiminee" and Mr Bank's "The Life I Lead") receive multiple reprises. All these tunes are as catchy and entertaining as they were in 1964 ("Step in Time is my personal favourite) and have become the highlight of the film.

However, whilst the effects and music are great, the fantasy sequences often overrun and make the film feel incredibly padded. It is 140 minutes long, and could probably be cut to as little as 70 minutes without affecting the narrative in any way. Despite this,my the quality of the songs and effects justifies most of the extra length. Also, those who like Disney's increasingly complex characters may feel like the cast here is relatively flat. Mary and Bert have plenty of charisma and likeability, they are relatively flat characters. Mr Banks is probably the only character to receive any meaningful development, and he is absent for long stretches of the story. The.