This Oscar Wilde play is as funny now as when it was written. The basic story is that Jack (Firth) lives a philandering bachelor life in the city as 'Ernest' with his friend Algy (Everett). But Jack also lives a respectable life in the county alongside his charge Cecily (Witherspoon). The only Ernest he knows is his 'brother' who lives in the city. Get it? But Jack is in love with Gwendolyn (O'Connor), and Gwendolyn knows him as Ernest! Algy is jealous, so he travels to the country under the name Ernest (Jack's brother) and falls in love with Cecily. Follow that? Don't worry, the film is wonderfully put together and works like a charm.

Writer-director Oliver Parker, who gave us the wonderful An Ideal Husband (also with Everett), has excelled in making this wonderfully clever play into a wonderfully clever film.

Jane and Michael Banks have an unfortunate history of forcing every nanny they've ever had to quit. But the latest nanny to arrive (floating down the street via umbrella) may be just what they're looking for. The practically perfect Mary Poppins is soon treating them to everything from a journey through chalk pavement drawings (animated in proper Disney style) to a journey up the chimneys with some all-singing-all-dancing chimneysweeps.

Probably the best Disney live-action film ever, Mary Poppins has the advantages of featuring Julie Andrews at the start of her career (before the perfect diction became painful) and the enthusiastic Dick Van Dyke, who makes up in energy what he may lack in a convincing cockney accent, and a great shovel-load of memorable songs. And dancing penguins. There are perhaps a few too many wacky suffragette-movement jokes in the opening scenes (though they do help to set the period), and the family bonding at the end isn't exactly subtle, but, all in all, this is still a pretty damn good way to spend an afternoon. One might almost say it's supercalifragilisticexpialadocious (damn, nearly got away without saying it).