Misleading critics - Mary Poppins

If I wrote a piece every time a critic was misleading I would be very communicative, But here is a common error - blaming the actor/crediting the actor for something not in their power.

We went to see "Mary Poppins" when we were away in the Quantocks, and had different reactions to it. S. thought it was far too like the original. He spotted that the writers had used the old film as a blueprint and traced slightly different variations on top, which was, in his opinion, uncreative. I liked it a lot. I never liked Julie Andrews voice - she sounded inauthentic, like the product of intensive elocution lessons; and I feared that she had somehow lost her true self in the process. (She looked warm and kind and sympathetic when she dealt with the children, which was a plus.) But I preferred this new overly posh Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) because I felt she had something genuine about her - poise and a genuine confidence around children. And in the song and dance routine she lost her posh voice and sounded cockney, and I'm pretty sure that was what she was like in the books. A cockney with a veneer of put-on genteel. I vaguely remember that she was a real disappointment in the books because she was not Disney sweet, not at all.

This is the comment from the misleading critic (Vulture.com) "Whishaw's bereavement is so pained, it casts a pall over his scenes." This reads as though Ben Whishaw were at fault. He was simply acting the lines that were written, in the manner the director approved. Yes, he was brilliant at making you feel his intense pain, and that's because he is a really good actor! If the screenwriter hadn't written the scenes where he shows grief he wouldn't have done so. Bad marks for the writer - but in this case the writer decided to throw in a bit of creativity in the form of a problem that Mary Poppins cannot solve. Nothing can make poor dead mother come back. Mary P can only advise the family on how to come to terms with their loss. It is a very emotional centre to a pretty spectacle.

The critic says "only Mortimer brings the requisite lightness to her role." Yes, she played Jane Banks, sister of Whishaw's Michael. She wasn't bereaved in the story, and furthermore, she had an eye for a handsome lamplighter, and romance came her way, which generally is a cause for cheerfulness. The script did not require her to grieve.

So, misleading critic, don't blame the actor for the way the film is constructed and written.