A Jolly Holiday
About a quarter century before it came back into fashion with Who Framed Roger Rabbit Disney’s classic Academy Award winning film Mary Poppins was a pioneer in integrating animation with live action, and with the addition of musical numbers throughout, it really is a jolly holiday wiv Mary as she nannys the Banks family and sings her way into our hearts.

Practically Perfect in Every Way
Mary Poppins 45th Anniversary Edition is almost perfect, but where’s our Blu-ray version? Well, if you look at it practically, when studios go back to the original negatives from over forty years ago, it’s a lot of work going frame by frame and cleaning up any errors that exist after they individually scan each frame at the highest conceivable resolution. This takes a ton of time when you’re just talking about regular live action film. Now consider that you’re talking about not only live action, but also animated images composited with live action. I don’t pretend to know the state of the original media, but I really wonder if Mary will ever become perfect enough to warrant Blu-ray.

A Spoonful of Sugar
That said, Mary Poppins 45th Anniversary Edition is worth picking up for kids of all ages. It’s cleaner than any version I’ve seen before both audio and visually, and it’s got a generous amount of DVD Extras.

From the Magic Carpetbag:

• Backstage Disney – Disney on Broadway
  –Mary Poppins From Page to Stage
  -“Step in Time” Musical Number
  -“Step in Time” downloadable MP3
  -Bob Crowley’s design Gallery
  -Rare Behind the Scenes Footage
  -Poppins Pop-up Fun Facts
   
• Bonus Short
  -An Animated Adventure Hosted by Julie Andrews
   
• Music and More
  -Musical reunion with Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and Richard Sherman
  -Deleted Song

  Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
  ComicsOnline gives Mary Poppins 45th Anniversary Edition 4.5 out of 5 Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious jolly holidays!