Mary Poppins Returns (a movie review post)

Where even to begin with this one? I mean, Mary Poppins Returns should have been... Man, I hate going to sports analogies, but it should have been a grand slam. At least a home run. It's the kind of movie that parents should have been swarming to with their kids, not so much because their kids wanted to see it but because they wanted to see it. Mary Poppins is one of the most beloved of Disney characters and has been for decades. But, yet, it's been drowned out by Aquaman. Aquaman!

Which is not unjustified, as it turns out. Not that I've seen Aquaman (and probably won't bother to, either, or at least not in the theater), but Poppins never managed to rise above mediocre. And mediocre is very difficult at more than two hours.

So let's deal with the most glaring problem first: the music. In a word, boring. In two? Unmemorable. And to add insult to that: They had Lin-Manuel Miranda right there! He's in the freaking movie, man; use him for what he's really great at: writing music, not singing it. Which is not to say that he's not a fine singer, he is, but it's not his gift. When you have one of the greatest living song writers on hand, why would you settle for lackluster crap? It's a musical, for crying out loud, the music is the most important element. Come on, Disney, you're better than this!
Now I have to go listen to the Moana soundtrack so that I can experience a bit of what Poppins should have been like.

Moving on to the story, we fare no better. Stories in musicals tend to be a bit simpler than your general movie plots because you have to spend time on musical numbers rather than telling story, and that's okay... when the music is good, because the music should be carrying the story. But, when the music isn't great, you better have a solid story to fall back on. In Poppins, not so much. The plot is simple and predictable, predictable almost to the point of unbelievability.

Unbelievable in what ways? Well, the villain is the villain because he's the villain. He just likes to win. Or he doesn't like to lose. On of the two. He seems to have no motivation other than that. Every time they hint at anything beyond that, they back off of it and leave it at, "I must take all the houses from all the people!" And Colin Firth just isn't adept enough as an actor to pull any of this off.

Michael Banks is also completely unbelievable as the asshole father, something which is constantly undermined by the script. He gets mad at his kids and yells or whatever but breaks down in tears over it moments later. He's lost his wife and is losing his house as a result of his grief, so we can't even see him as incompetent, just vaguely hapless. It really destroys the dynamic of the first Poppins where Michael's father is an asshole. It's like the writers wanted to retain that dynamic in the household but couldn't bring themselves to have Michael have grown up to become an asshole. Which, granted, would have been hard to swallow, but it would also have been a great reason for Poppins to return, "Michael! I'm ashamed of what you've become!" But, no, instead they just kind of wallow around in being wishy-washy.

It makes the movie a mess.

Then there's Emily Mortimer, and I like Emily Mortimer, but her role is a mess, too. I'm blaming it more on the directing than on her, but she's constantly spunky and upbeat through the whole movie which makes the threat of losing the house seem like a non-threat. And you know that that's true, anyway, because you know that there's no way they're going to lose the house, but the viewer needs to believe that the characters believe that the threat is real and Mortimer's character more than any other undermines that tension.

So not only is the music boring, but the movie is too.

However, the animation sequences were beautiful.

And, actually, Emily Blunt was fantastic as Mary Poppins. So good in fact that I wish there was going to be another Mary Poppins movie just to see her return to the role; however, I doubt the box office will be good enough on this for Disney to want to risk another one anytime soon. Which is a shame because, like I said, this should have been an easy win for Disney rather than the snoozefest it turned into.

How To Watch Opera

So... As you regular readers are well aware, I've been doing opera reviews for a while now. This is not something I'm doing to prove how cultured I am or anything like that. I review a lot of the entertainment I take in: most all movies I see at the theater, books that I read (though I skip some of the short stories), some of the TV shows I watch. Reviewing the operas we go to is a way to both cover something local (which is another thing I do lot of, talk about local events) and to share something that I'm doing. I don't actually look at going to the opera as being something highbrow.

Yes, I'm well aware that "people" tend to view opera as highbrow, but that's not because it is. Opera suffers from the same fate as lobster.
What?
Yeah, I'm not going to explain that right now, but opera, traditionally, was entertainment for the masses not the rich and elite, just like, during his day, Shakespeare was "popular media." My position is that it should, again, be entertainment for the masses.
Yes, I know there are barriers to that, barriers that will probably not be overcome, but that doesn't mean I can't hope and encourage you to check out some opera.

Here's how to go about doing that:

1. Go see Hamilton: An American Musical. Okay, so, sure, that's a bit impractical for most people including myself, even though it is coming to San Francisco. At least for the foreseeable future, it's way out of our price range (more on cost later). However, if you want to get into the technicalities of musical theater, Hamilton is an opera and, if nothing else, you should listen to it. And then again. And probably again. Trust me, we've been on about Hamilton in our house for well over a year (including having had custom Hamilton t-shirts made for 2/3 of our kids for Christmas last year (and I would show you a picture if those weren't in the pictures I lost in the great hard drive crash)).

The point? To show you the potential of opera. The medium itself is not confined to centuries old music and people in fancy clothes.

2. Watch some foreign movies with subtitles. This is the big roadblock for most people, and it's because most people don't read. People who don't read can't keep up with subtitles and also watch the movie. Not that it's not possible to develop the skill of watching something with subtitles without also being a reader, but people who only take in movies and TV are much less likely to move in the direction of shows with subtitles.

So, yeah, most (by far) operas are performed in languages other than English, mostly because they were written in other languages than English. However, some venues offer supertitles [Basically, a subtitle. No, I don't know why they're referred to as supertitles at the opera, but they are.], which I strongly recommend. If not, translations of the songs are available, so it's possible to follow along that way. [SFO always has nights with supertitles for each opera they're doing, and we always go to those shows, even when the opera is being performed in English. (Believe it or not, it helps.)]

3. Pick a genre you like. This is a bit more difficult to do, because it's not like opera contains all of the genres in modern pop culture. Or all of the sub-genres. In one sense, all of opera breaks down into two broad categories: tragedy and comedy, but, then, isn't that true of all fiction? (Or non-fiction, for that matter.) All I'm saying is do your research. Puccini is not like Mozart. Find a story category you tend to like, then...

4. Listen to some music! Don't worry about the words since it's most likely going to be in Italian or French or German, but you want to find music you feel like you can listen to, you know, since you'll have to spend a couple of hours listening to it.

5. Evaluate the cost. This can be a big one. I'm not going to try to tell you that going to the opera is like going to the movies, though movies are expensive enough! However, check out ways to make going cheaper. For instance, many venues offer staggered pricing on the seating, so, if you're like us, you're going to want to choose the cheap seats. Also, the San Francisco Opera offers package deals so, if you buy, say, tickets to three operas at once, you get them for significantly cheaper than if you bought tickets to three individual operas. For us, with what we do, the tickets end up being about $25 each. That's actually a pretty good value.

I'd also suggest getting some on disc to watch, but that's a lot more difficult than you'd think it would be.

Or you can skip all of that and do what I did, which was kind of just to jump in. Okay, so that's not precisely true but, effectively, it's true. When my wife finally agreed to let me take her to the opera (after years of refusing because she thought I wouldn't like it and didn't want to have a bad experience with it (because she loves it)), I let her pick the first operas we saw. That, admittedly, is an easy way of doing it. Basically, you should find something that works for you.

Look, what I'm saying is this:
Give it a try. It's not like you can lose in that scenario. Sure, you might not like opera, but, then, you just might. And, really, I'd say try two or three different ones, because you might not get a good one the first time (like the first opera I saw when I was 20 was horrible, and I let that convince me for a long time that all of opera was bad, but I was a kid; what did I know?). And seriously, go check out Hamilton.