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Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather overthink Mary Poppins Returns, but the various spoonfuls of sugar don’t make the medicine go down.
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Further Reading
- “Cat People” by Louis Menand
- The Golden Bowl by Henry James
- “The Myth of Sysyphus” by Albert Camus
- Julie Andrews: Loss of Singing Voice from Wikipedia
- The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- Three Act Destructure on Creed II in the comments on OTIP 544
- SonicFox throws his hat off on YouTube
Thanks for the shout out.
Matt, fyi, my avatar is Godzilla in a suit and tie. A reflection of the warring dualities of man; eternally repressing through dapperness his biological desire to cut loose and wage war with King Ghidorah.
Pete, thank you for the detailed summary of SonicFox, someone whom, I confess, I knew mostly from some interesting headlines and a single awards show clip. I admit that using that specific article was a bit of projection, since I’m not personally knowledgeable about sports, e-sports, LeBron James, or the furry community. So when they were all frankenstein-ed together like that into the venerable “hot take” format, the whole thing read like word salad to me. Which is basically the feeling that I was going for, forgetting that I’m probably in the minority of people who don’t have some experience with at least one of those topics.
Having now watched the SonicFox EVO clip that you were referring to, my first takeaway is that it actually reminds me of a previous Overthinking It episode wherein you guys had a long discussion about the perceived benefits of stoicism and how they don’t always hold up under scrutiny. Being able to physically express his nervousness certainly didn’t stop SonicFox from pulling out a win against a tough opponent. And bounding joyfully about the stage while wearing a blue fox tail as part of his victory celebration didn’t do anything negative to his reputation as a serious athlete either. Both of which feel equally like natural, human responses and also like subtle sloughing-offs of some really emotionally-backwards, but unfortunately very traditional, notions of acceptable masculine exhibitions of identity.
So that’s neat.
“What was Angela Lansbury doing in this movie?”
The same thing she does every day: demonstrates that Meryl Streep is overrated.
So…is there a petition open for the Samurai Mary Poppins movie? Because that kind of sounds amazing. And it should probably be combined with the movie some people are suggesting that focuses more on Jane…
I do agree that the botched surgery probably figured into the decision for Julie Andrews to not be present. But I also suspect that her claim to not want to overshadow the production is legitimate; I could be wrong, but Andrews doesn’t seem like the sort of actor who’d refuse to be in a production that couldn’t center her, whereas I the entertainment press would focus on the “on-set relationship” between Andrews and Blunt over everything else.
Gonna “well actually” you and say that Lin-Manuel Miranda plays the character of Jack who is an apprentice of Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep in the original Mary Poppins. He grows up having a crush on Jane Banks who has no idea he exists. Which says something about class structures in England.
Wrather is 100% right that the correct ending to the movie was to have the hand drawn 10 £ note be the stock certificates. I thought for sure that was going to be it when he made the drawing….until the thing with the kite, at which point I already knew it was a) not the note and b) should still have been the note.
I finally got to see the new movie, and I did see the original recently as well. My thoughts are mostly about how the new one so slavishly follows the structure and beats of the original, which many reviewers were quick to criticize. I think it’s mostly a bug and not a feature. It is interesting to note that Disney pulled the same trick with The Force Awakens but seems to have succeeded in that case. It’s tough to say why exactly other than that TFA was just a more competent and cohesive work in general.
This train of thought also makes me wonder what a more original Poppins sequel could have been. Focus on Michael Banks’s PTSD from his World War I service (this is not at all canonicial but it’s in the ballpark)? Mary Poppins visits a family in one of Britain’s colonial possessions? Or AMERICA, god forbid? What about Mary Poppins getting an actual character arc and not be such a cypher?
All of this is probably forbidden by the Travers estate, but I can’t help but wonder.
(I have a sense of imagination, right? Where’s my damn balloon?)