MARY POPPINS  floated in on the British Invasion breeze in 1964, linking Julie Andrews and a pair of cute tots with Bond, the Beatles & Becket.

Walt Disney shrewdly worked his wiles on the difficult-to-charm P.L. Travers, tasking his California studio magicians to form elements of the first four of Travers eight Poppins stories into 139 minutes of song-stuffed whimsy and warmth. Their crafting returned Walt’s $6,000,000 investment to the tune of $75,600,000 just in North America. Goldfinger did edge it out of the Number 1 spot that year, which may say something about the relative spell-power of ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ versus ‘Pussy Galore’, but we so easily digress…

The Oscars went nuts, too, awarding it five: Best Actress (Andrews), Film Editing, Music Score, Song (“Chim-Chim Cher-ee”) and Visual Effects. Plus eight other nominations: Best Picture, Director (Robert Stevenson), Screenplay, Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound Mixing and Score Adaptation. Folks, don’t hang me from London Bridge, but—while it’s a nice movie, and strikes fond memories—a spoonful of sugar notwithstanding, thirteen nominations? Please, guv, it ain’t that good.

Andrews is fine, naturally (she was better in The Sound Of Music and Hawaii) but the Oscar would have been better served to Sophia Loren’s marvelous job on Marriage Italian Style or Kim Stanley’s stunning nutcase in Seance On A Wet Afternoon. We’d bestow the Editing, Score and Song to Goldfinger. 

Van Dyke is energetic, but—Holy Rob Petrie!— that gawd-awful accent set US/England relations back a generation.  Glynis Johns (speaking of voices) is fun as ever, David Tomlinson amuses as the father and the two kids, Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber, are cutie-pies; they’d warmed up for Walt in the sweet The Three Lives Of Thomasina.  

Ed Wynn just doesn’t cut it (his laughing bit makes me wish Malcolm McDowell would show up), and several of the—count’ em—seventeen songs only serve to pad the length a good twenty minutes beyond what was needed. “Feed The Birds” is good (hard not to be touched by old Jane Darwell) and “Let’s Go Fly A Kite” can get you out of the rocker to belt forth. The animation was novel back in LBJ days, not such a big deal now, spoiled children that we are.

Toss me in the Thames, because for this blasphemous pooper the beloved classic frankly plays better in memory.

With Hermione Baddeley, Reta Shaw, Reginald Owen, Arthur Treacher and Elsa Lanchester.