Mary Poppins Returns – 2 stars

What is good:  the song-and-dance numbers are assured and fun, the melding of animation and reality is deft, and it is for the most part very pleasant.

What is bad:  you don’t remember one of the tunes upon exiting the theater; it is very long and the plot, such as it is, is ragged; Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) comes off as kind of bitchy, with no real affection for the family; the father (Ben Whishaw) is a pitiful whiner; Lin Manuel-Miranda would have been better off writing the musical numbers rather than offering his version of the cockney lamplighter (that version has said lamplighter on MDMA with an accent rivaling that of Kevin Costner in Robin Hood for authenticity); and Meryl Streep is shoehorned into the picture as a gypsy, replete with her own hammy, endless, obnoxious number.