A SPOONFUL OF SPLENDA......BQ TELLS DISNEY TO GO FLY A KITE WITH "MARY POPPINS RETURNS"

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)     My heart goes out to anyone faced with writing a review of one of Disney's elaborate reboot/reinvention/remakes of one of their beloved classic films......

            So to everybody faced with posting something about Tim Burton's "Dumbo"........my deepest sympathies.......

              Pardon me while I take a deep sigh.........

             When Disney's corporate masters finally finish their CGI strip-mining of Walt's old catalog, we wonder what their production slate'll come down to..........a live-action "Steamboat Willie"?  With Christian Bale losing 147 pounds to play Mickey Mouse?

              Sorry, but this isn't any different than reviewing a new car that you just drove off the lot......

             I could go on and on how bright and shiny it is, how it hums along, gives a smooth ride, and overall is one hellacious piece of meticulously crafted technology......

             But ya know what?  For all the rapturous descriptions.........it's still a machine. Assembled on a production line from mathematically precise blueprints........

             If any real human beings worked on it, all they did was tighten screws, connect wires, and spay on a fresh coat of paint.  Robotic arms probably welded the thing together.......

              The scientific calculations here are both impressive and kind of frightening.........for every moment and song in the original "Mary Poppins", there's an equivalent imitation........giving the audience the effect of watching an alternate universe version of the 1964 film.

               The filmmakers here exhaust themselves into oblivion making their duplicate 'Mary Poppins'........to use the universe of "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" as an example, after the pod people finished ooozing out exact copies of everyone, all the movies they made would look like "Mary Poppins Returns", creepy carbon copies of films by previously flesh and blood people.......

                Fittingly, Emily Blunt's Mary Poppins appears hatched from a pod.........she's got the costumes and delivery of Julie Andrews.......but the inherent warmth and goodness Andrews radiated is somehow missing........(you half expect the kids to scream out "My nanny is not my nanny!")

                Early on, in the film's interminable 130 minute running time, Blunt sings "Can you imagine that?"......this movie's artificially sweetened, pod version of "A Spoonful Of Sugar".......

                As she warbled on,  BQ couldn't help mentally totaling up the daunting amount of time, money, and laborious amount of craft (actors, dancers, musicians, production staff) that went into this film.......

                 For a dreamy moment as the credits rolled, we thought of the fresh, completely original film these talented people could have come together to make.......instead of sweating bullets to produce a machine-tooled, 1 & 1/2 star (* 1/2) thing like "Mary Poppins Returns"........

                 Can you imagine that?