No Wonder That It's Mary That We Love

I was sick last week so I rented Mary Poppins to comfort me. Sometimes I like to watch movies I loved as a child because it's so much fun to relive the things you adored and also fun to see things that you didn't pick up on as a child. I wasn't planning on my Mary Poppins viewing being this way - I just wanted to relax and to see the scene where they jump into the chalk drawing. Turns out there were many things I was surprised by.

Firstly, I never realized as a child that she shows up to fix the family, to get the dad involved with his kids and wife and stop him being such a jerk. I always thought she arrived for the kids, just to play games and sing songs.

I liked that the men at the bank were represented as scary and money-grubbing.

Mary is actually very full of herself (with good reason though, I suppose).

I never caught the fact that Supercalifragilisticexpealidoscious was something you say when you aren't sure what to say.

Another thing I'd never noticed was how Burt - the chimney sweep and the dancing/singing guy who accompanies them into the chalk drawing - is in love with Mary. In their songs, he makes advances on her but she delicately turns him down each time, saying how much she appreciates having a friend like him who would never take advantage. I never noticed that he was telling her he loves her. I guess I was distracted by the dancing penguins.

I understood the words in the songs much better. I used to think they were singing very different things ... lyrics that made little sense.

And I understood the accent better. The maids have those lower-class British accents. During that chimney sweep scene (which I loved to) when they all come down into the house and are dancing, and then the father comes home, one maid shouts "It's the Master!" and they all incorporate that into the song and sing "It's the Master. Step in time! It's the Master. Step in time! Never need a reason, never need a rhyme, It's the Master. Step in time!"

As a child, I always thought they called the father "the monster" and I was actually a little disappointed last night to realize they were saying master. As a kid, I thought it was hilarious that they called him the monster, and even funnier that a whole crew of chimney sweeps would readily chime in on it.

I always liked that the mother was a sufferagette. I liked her Votes For Women song as a kid, but what annoyed me when watching it last week was that she goes to protests and her friends get arrested for the cause and all that, but she is completely submissive to The Monster, obeying and placating him no matter what.

As far as Mary revamping the father's life, it seems to be her plan from the beginning. At one point, Burt tells the kids that a handshake from a chimney sweep is lucky. I imagine that Mary must have allowed all the sweeps into the house because they would shake the father's hand on the way out, which they all do, causing the daughter to point it out and tell her father he will be very lucky. He then loses his job but realizes the value of his children. That's what the movie is about.