Love and Limits
"Practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking."--Mary Poppins, moments before, her work with the Banks family complete, she takes flight, never to see them again. There's a poignant rightness to that scene, something I recognized from an early age. I've seen Disney's Mary Poppins more times than I can count; I may even have seen it when it was first released in 1964, though since I was three, I don't have any memory of it. There's plenty of meat here for both children and adults: magic that turns chores into play, adventures on rooftops and inside a chalk painting, lessons in the relative worth of money, work, and family, how to recognize a horrible Cockney accent, catchy songs and invigorating dance routines, and on and on it goes. Almost all of it can be brushed away as a feel-good fantasy about a magical visitor helping a broken family come together, with the requisite happy ending one expects from a Disney movie--almo...