Mary Poppins/YMMV: Difference between revisions
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** Step in time! Step in time! Step in time! Step in time! Never need a reason, never need a rhyme! Step in time! You step in time!
* [[Ensemble Darkhorse]]: Miss Andrew, the anti-Poppins, seems to be this in the stage version.
* [[Harsher in Hindsight]]: While both the book Poppins and the theatrical renditions endeared audiences with her child-caring skills and magic (despite being something of a narcissistic [[Jerkass]] no less), P. L. Travers apparently did not live up to what her stories preached, as her bizarre decision to adopt just one half of a pair of twins based on the advice of an astrologer left her adoptive son Camillus bitter and resentful over his stepmother. He did however visit her adoptive mother on her deathbed and seems to have reconciled since then.
* [[Narm Charm]]: Everyone knows how ''painful'' Dick van Dyke's faux Cockney accent is in the film, but most are willing to forgive Dick for it anyway.
* [[Purity Sue]]: A rare positive example, helped by Andrews's [[Academy Award]] winning performance, making Mary come across as a three dimensional character.
* [[So Bad It's Good]]: Not the movie itself, mind. But rather, ''[[Dick Van Dyke]]'s accent.''
* [[Values Dissonance]]:
** Particularly in the initial pressings of the books, where the chapter "Bad Tuesday" has stereotyped depictions of Alaskan Native, Chinese, Indigenous American, and tropical "Negroes", the latter of which fall victim to those racist Southern-style tropes of watermelons and slave patois; this led to the original book being [[Banned in China|banned]] from the San Francisco Public Library system in 1980, though P. L. Travers did later amend the offending chapter ''twice'', once in 1961 with the removal of offensive words and lines of stereotypical portrayals, and another in 1981 with the stereotyped ethnic portrayals replaced with animals instead. To be completely fair, Travers did pay a visit to Indigenous American reservations at some point in her career so she was at least somewhat aware of their culture, but the values
** The 1964 film garnered some minor controversy in 2024 when the BBFC re-rated it from U (Universal) to Parental Guidance due to the use of the (archaic) ethnic slur "Hottentot" in reference to the [[wikipedia:Khoekhoe|Khoekhoe]] people of [[South Africa]], which the film board apparently perceived as more akin to the similarly offensive term "gypsy" for Romani people or perhaps the [[N-Word Privileges|n-word]] for that matter.
* [[Visual Effects of Awesome (Sugar Wiki)|Visual Effects of Awesome]]: While considered quaint by today's standards, ''Mary Poppins'' is noted for being one of the most visually-stunning films of the time. Of particular note was its use of the [[wikipedia:Sodium vapor process|sodium vapor process]], whereby a powerful light produces a shade with a characteristic wavelength near 589 nm. Light from the sodium lamp is cast onto a white background, producing a specific shade which could be split onto a special prism allowing for a more accurate and cleanly isolated matte. This accounts for why the animated park sequence lacked the ugly fringing common with blue and/or green screen techniques (which required a ''lot'' of manual tweaking to fix in post-production; ironically enough, the 2018 sequel used a lot of blue and green screen though to be fair visual effects technology has advanced by that time) and allowed for complex elements such as the see-through veil in Mary's fancy dress to show up seamlessly as well as the blue stripes in Bert's suit.
** [[Lost Technology]]: The process depended on a very special cubical prism especially fabricated for this purpose, which was then fitted into a custom-built camera that exposed two reels of film at the same time. Only three of these prisms were ever made -- and no one knows what happened to them in the years since they were last used. Fortunately, [[Technology Marches On]], and as of the early 2020s it is now possible to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQuIVsNzqDk recreate the process with off-the-shelf parts].
* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?]]: Some critics and academics have argued that the film encapsulates the societal shift of its time, with Mr. Banks representing the passing of the stuffy 1950s and Mary Poppins representing the arrival of the carefree 1960s.
** In the musical, the contrast between generations is represented in the story, with George Banks, Miss Andrew, and most of the adults representing the older up-tight Victorian era while Mary, Bert, Mrs. Corry, Northbrook and a few others represent the much looser Edwardian era.
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