Mary Poppins didn't deserve to win anything, and if My Fair Lady hadn't (deservedly) swept the Oscars that year, Dr. Strangelove would have won. You want to talk about songs that don't advance the plot? If there was a plot and not just a series of loosely connected events leading up to an unconvincing conclusion (that real personal change can ever come from an outside source), I could talk about how the songs didn't fit into it. But that would force me to have to listen to the songs. Not gonna happen. If I never have to be subjected to "Step in Time" or "Feed the Birds," I will die a very happy, very old man. I read the book to see if what I hated about the movie is true about the books. The movie tries to make Mary Poppins more sympathetic unsuccessfully; after the way she threatened to call the police on Michael Banks (Matthew Garber was not that great of an actor, frankly, and I just rewatched The Gnome-Mobile and found him to be the weak link) because he didn't want to go to sleep, I knew I had no use for this vain, narcissistic, mean-spirited pathological liar. Maybe he just wasn't tired! She was even worse in the books. Yet the movie also makes Mr. Banks less sympathetic. It is extremely difficult for me to care about an emotionally abusive father. And Mrs. Banks was just as bad a mother as he was a father, yet Mary Poppins says nothing to her. At least she's supporting a noble cause, although she casually brushes it aside at the end. Why? I thought Bert, who has only one story out of the many in the eight books, did not need to be made into a leading character, and Dick Van Dyke was horrendously miscast (his accent is not just inauthentic, but it is inauthentic in a way that is grating to the ear). And the animated sequences are like a Disney hater's idea of what a Disney movie is like. Those ooey-gooey pastels and that nauseating carousel calliope, and that annoying made-up word song with a made-up word they didn't make up! Uggh!
And after losing 80 pounds to do something about my childhood obesity, I'm living proof that a spoonful of sugar does not, in fact, make the medicine go down. Why do the same types who complain about the Princesses and Song of the South let them off the hook for this?
I saw Saving Mr. Banks to see if I felt the same way I always have, even as a child. And guess what, I do. It has also made me a non-fan of anything by Helen Lyndon Goff. She hated the art of animation. And considering what happened to the boy she adopted (out of a set of twins she broke up), she's the last person who had any right to give advice on child-rearing in any form. But I agree with her on the movie version of her books and that some, but not all, of her reasons for being suspicious of Disney making her work were valid. It is a poor adaptation of an overrated book series.
I also do not agree that The Happiest Millionaire and The Jungle Book (one of the most flat-out fun Disney scores) are "soulless." That word denotes a work made with no conviction or care, a word that does not describe either of those works or any of the Shermans' subsequent works. Yet everyone is compared negatively to the vastly overrated Mary Poppins using criteria that would also indict Mary Poppins as well. Every single, solitary review of Jungle Book, Chitty, Millionaire, Family Band, Bedknobs, etc., I have ever read—even the good ones—invokes the name of this film with absurd reverence as if their lack of originality allows them to ignore how many things in Poppins were done before in other movies, too. The cloud gag was stolen from Dumbo, the mirror that talks back was stolen from Babes in Toyland (which, except for the scenes with Tommy Kirk and Ed Wynn, was even worse), the line "in the most delightful way" was taken from Gigi, and so much of this "daddy doesn't love me" stuff was also done before, and I dare say better, in Song of the South and the stage version of The Sound of Music. And as for being set in London in 1910, the books were set in the 1930s, which was then the present day. You don't think the fact that My Fair Lady was also set during that era didn't have something to do with why they moved the setting back 20 years. It makes more sense for there to be a bank run during the Great Depression.
The Sherman Brothers can and have done better. In fact, many of the films they worked on are worth watching because of their contributions. They knew a damn sight more about storytelling than the Nine Old Men proved they did without Walt, or rather, they learned on the job.
I have other reservations with the film, too, but they fall outside the realm of acceptable HTF discussion.
And after losing 80 pounds to do something about my childhood obesity, I'm living proof that a spoonful of sugar does not, in fact, make the medicine go down. Why do the same types who complain about the Princesses and Song of the South let them off the hook for this?
I saw Saving Mr. Banks to see if I felt the same way I always have, even as a child. And guess what, I do. It has also made me a non-fan of anything by Helen Lyndon Goff. She hated the art of animation. And considering what happened to the boy she adopted (out of a set of twins she broke up), she's the last person who had any right to give advice on child-rearing in any form. But I agree with her on the movie version of her books and that some, but not all, of her reasons for being suspicious of Disney making her work were valid. It is a poor adaptation of an overrated book series.
I also do not agree that The Happiest Millionaire and The Jungle Book (one of the most flat-out fun Disney scores) are "soulless." That word denotes a work made with no conviction or care, a word that does not describe either of those works or any of the Shermans' subsequent works. Yet everyone is compared negatively to the vastly overrated Mary Poppins using criteria that would also indict Mary Poppins as well. Every single, solitary review of Jungle Book, Chitty, Millionaire, Family Band, Bedknobs, etc., I have ever read—even the good ones—invokes the name of this film with absurd reverence as if their lack of originality allows them to ignore how many things in Poppins were done before in other movies, too. The cloud gag was stolen from Dumbo, the mirror that talks back was stolen from Babes in Toyland (which, except for the scenes with Tommy Kirk and Ed Wynn, was even worse), the line "in the most delightful way" was taken from Gigi, and so much of this "daddy doesn't love me" stuff was also done before, and I dare say better, in Song of the South and the stage version of The Sound of Music. And as for being set in London in 1910, the books were set in the 1930s, which was then the present day. You don't think the fact that My Fair Lady was also set during that era didn't have something to do with why they moved the setting back 20 years. It makes more sense for there to be a bank run during the Great Depression.
The Sherman Brothers can and have done better. In fact, many of the films they worked on are worth watching because of their contributions. They knew a damn sight more about storytelling than the Nine Old Men proved they did without Walt, or rather, they learned on the job.
I have other reservations with the film, too, but they fall outside the realm of acceptable HTF discussion.
