Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Dir: Robert Stevenson, 1971). 

It was inevitable that, sooner or later, I would post a review of Walt Disney Productions’ Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I have watched this movie more times than any other, losing count when I hit three figures. I wouldn’t say it is the best film I have ever seen but I would say it has given me more pleasure over the years than any other.

Often compared unfavourably and, I feel, unfairly with Disney’s 1964 blockbuster Mary Poppins, it reunited most of the creative team and star David Tomlinson from the earlier film. It also shares with it a lengthy ‘Jolly Holiday’-esq animated sequence and a basic premise about a magical governess. Yet the plot, taken from yet having little in common with Mary Norton’s book, about an amateur witch’s attempts to repel a Nazi invasion in wartime Britain with the help of three cockney waifs, is markedly different from Poppins and Tomlinson’s performance as a loveable charlatan magician is completely different from the repressed banker and estranged father he portrayed in Poppins. 

To be honest, it isn’t as good a film as Mary Poppins. It has a messy, episodic narrative which zealous editing - there are at least five different official versions of the film - was not entirely successful at tidying up. The international and US re-release version, at roughly 100 minutes, has the most satisfying narrative but cuts virtually all of Richard and Robert Sherman’s excellent songs; those that do remain are butchered, the lavish Portobello Road suffering most noticeably. An attempt in 1996 to restore the film to its original, and sadly lost, premier length brings the runtime to 139 minutes but suffers from poor dubbing on scenes where the audio could not be found. 

In spite of narrative issues the standard, roughly two hour release print is the default and best version of Bedknobs... Director Robert Stevenson is almost successful at recreating the ol’ Poppins magic; Ward Kimball’s inventive animated excursion to the Island of Naboombu is the undoubted highlight of Disney Animation’s 1970s output; the effects work, including some incredible puppetry of bodiless suits of armour in the epic climax, hold up well against modern CGI techniques and the performance from stars Angela Lansbury, David Tomlinson and company are exemplary. The Sherman Brother’s songs, including The Age of Not Believing, Beautiful Briny and the spectacular Portobello Road are among their best, perhaps a shade down from their work on Poppins, but there is no shame in coming second place to arguably the greatest musical score ever written for the cinema! 

I reiterate, Bedknobs and Broomsticks is not as great a piece of filmmaking as Mary Poppins, but as a child I enjoyed it more. I certainly watched it more often. While perhaps it doesn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts, I think it is highly entertaining, is rightly regarded a classic and should probably be regarded a masterpiece, albeit a flawed masterpiece.