Michael (Ben Whishaw), of course, is Michael Banks, who now has three sweet, unruly young children of his own. (They’re played by Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh and Joel Dawson.) He and his sister, Jane (Emily Mortimer), a labor activist, are shocked to be reunited with the nanny who once took them on all manner of magical outings, as they only vaguely recall. You might well share their confusion, given that this Mary Poppins seems not to have aged a day, though she is also an inexplicably, undeniably different being. The effect might have been positively creepy if Blunt weren’t an innately appealing screen presence, though her charisma feels stifled here by the director’s timidity and the audience’s impossible expectations.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 12, 2018 17:02 UTC