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Rigid disciplinarian George Banks, enraged by the rapid turnover of nannies for his children Jane and Michael, relieves his wife of further responsibility in the matter and places in The Times an advertisement for the sort of many who will stand for no nonsense. Next morning a queue of suitably severe-looking women forms outside 17 Cherry Tree Lane; but the children's own specification for the new nanny, written on a piece of paper which their father had torn up and thrown into the fireplace has floated out of the chimney and reached sympathetic ears. A great wind sweeps all the nasty nannies out of the street, and in on her umbrella sails Mary Poppins, who has every possible attraction including magic powers. On their first walk together she takes the children into a picture of the countryside that her friend Ben has chalked on the pavement. Another day they visit her Uncle Albert, who floats laughing round the ceiling of his living room. Unimpressed by what he hears of these frivolities, Mr. Banks takes the children to visit the bank where he works. There an incident arising from Michael's refusal to open an account with his tuppence, is misconstrued by a customer and starts a run on the bank. The children run away, and are taken home by a chimney sweep who turns out to be Bert. Mr. Banks is fired from the bank, but seized by sudden frivolity quotes a joke which his children learnt in the company of Mary Poppins. Later, seeing the point, the aged Chairman of the Board dies of laughter. A new and carefree Mr. Banks is asked to fill the vacancy on the Board, and Mary Poppins, her good work completed, flies off.

Without decrying such beautifully handled special effects such as the one in which the coven of unwanted nannies is blown out of Cherry Tree Lane, one must admit to the feeling that all the best bits of this film spring from the imagination of authoress P. L. Travers. Walt Disney's musical, despite or maybe because of its songs and dances, carefully chosen cast and highly competent trick work, simply circumscribes that imagination. With the kind of film the Disney team makes, when everything happens according to a well established formula for the provision of entertainment without surprises, and where the magic of Tinkerbell and that of Mary Poppins find a common denominator in the single word "glamour", this is perhaps inevitable. Like the good, clean joke that kills the Chairman of the bank, the Disney world is nonetheless enjoyable on its own level - here as much so as ever. Fitting neatly into Mary Poppins' description of herself as "practically perfect in every way", Julie Andrews cuts a pretty figure as the nicest of all nannies; so, as the sentimentalised little mother with her comical attachment to the suffragette movement, does Glynis Johns. David Tomlinson is covered with gloom as the stereotyped city gent, and Dick Van Dyke full of noise as the equally stereotyped stage Cockney. Apart from a few complacent reminders, like the bird woman selling bread outside St. Paul's, of the town made familiar by My Fair Lady, the London settings, especially the street in which the Banks live, have a genuine Edwardian charm. It is really when the film is at its most fanciful that it pleases least; when, for instance, the children with Mary and Bert step into Bert's picture to move among a host of animated cartoon animals against luridly colourful backdrops or through floating flower petals. Basic Disney perhaps, but not somehow the stuff that dreams are made of.

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