A trite concoction, containing enough sugar to kill a diabetic and sufficient ham to scandalise a vegetarian. Neither of my kids could abide it! Much inferior to the slighly-more -bearable Nanny McPhee.

Mr Banks provides for his family and does so well. But his distance from his family is shown as an act of will, rather than the result of the exhaustion caused by what was, in those days, a demanding and responsible role involvng long hours of work using pen, paper and mental arithmetic - no calculators or spreadsheets back then! His entire life hangs on the whim of an autocratic boss, and like the poorest factory worker of the times, he is only one mistake away from the Workhouse. He understands the world he lives in and wants his children to be able to survive in it. For this, they need discipline. Yet the film represents his attitude as closed-minded buffoonery and patriarchal authoritarianism.

In a direct, and wholly hypocritical, contrast, Mrs Banks is portrayed as a feather-headed ditz. Her espousal of the Suffragette cause is treated as a joke. This reduces the cause itself to a joke and is a not-so-subtle dig at the nascent Womens' Movement of the 1960s.

Then along comes hippy guru Poppins, leading the children into a series of hallucinatory adventures whilst extolling the vrtues of self-expression, rebellion, disregard of auhority and feeding pigeons! Her actions and teachings destroy Banks' career and he is saved only by a highly-improbable final twist - being made a partner because his boss died laughing. Wait, what????

About Dick Van Dyke I say nothing. I dislike the use of obscenities.

What a load of nonsense!