Sensibly, Blunt doesn’t impersonate Andrews. Less sensibly, she impersonates Maggie Smith: her haughty, upper-crust Mary would be right at home in Downtown Abbey. But otherwise, Mary Poppins Returns is so similar to its predecessor as to be almost identical. There are no revelations, no unexpected locations, no hints at what Mary gets up to when she isn’t looking after the Banks children – although we’ll probably get a prequel set in nanny-training college in a few years’ time. The only significant difference is that the story has been moved on from 1910 to the 1930s, so it’s Mary Poppins: The Next Generation.

Michael and Jane, the children Mary cared for in the first film, are now adults played by Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer. Michael is still living in the enviable property that the Banks family occupied last time around, with a park across the road and a retired admiral for a neighbour. But Michael’s wife died after a long illness, and, to make matters worse, he funded her treatment by borrowing money from the grand Fidelity Fiduciary bank where his father used to work. If he can’t repay the loan within a week, he and his three children will be evicted, and the Banks’ house will be the bank’s house.

This is Mary Poppins’ cue to float down from the sky with her carpet bag and her talking umbrella to take the children out and about in London while Michael and Jane search for the share certificate which might just save them from homelessness. This ticking-clock scenario makes the film slightly gloomy: even when Mary and the children are dancing with cartoon penguins, we’re always aware that the Banks family is on thin ice.

Yes, there are cartoon penguins: two-dimensional, hand-drawn cartoon penguins, just like the ones from 1964. In general, every character and every sequence in the new film echoes a character or a sequence from the old one. But the film-makers come up with inspired variations on these familiar themes. Instead of a chimney sweep played by Dick Van Dyke, there’s a lamplighter played by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton. Instead of a song about flying a kite, there’s a song about holding a balloon. Instead of jumping into a pavement drawing, the characters jump into the glaze on a porcelain bowl. Instead of visiting an uncle of Mary’s who floats up to the ceiling, they visit Mary’s cousin Topsy (Meryl Streep) who stands on the ceiling when her house flips upside down.