Saving Mr. Banks

This movie is barely based on a true story.  The people really existed and Disney did make a film entitled Mary Poppins, but the reality ends there.  I'll leave any truth-seeking up to the curious reader.  While I feel that the real story is more interesting, it wouldn't make for a very good movie.  Saving Mr. Banks is revisionist history at its best.  The film throws history and facts out the window and replaces them with emotion and narrative arcs.  The result is a wonderful, if sappy, look at the making of Mary Poppins.

In this film, P. L. Travers (author of the Mary Poppins books) is forced by impending financial trouble to sell the rights to her character to Walt Disney.  However, she makes the stipulation that she have final say over the script.  Travers flies to Los Angeles and begins causing problems for Disney and his creative staff.  Travers eventually faces her traumatic past and learns to live again.  Mary Poppins turns out to be a pretty good movie.

Tom Hanks is great as Walt Disney.  He nails the rhythm of Disney's speech without ever entering the realm of imitation.  Thing is that Hanks isn't in much of the movie.  Emma Thompson kills it.  She makes her character's growth feel very natural.  Considering that scenes in films are almost never shot in order, it's pretty incredible that she could make the incremental chipping away of her rough exterior appear so seamless.  Jason Schwartzman and B. J. Novak as the Sherman Brothers and Bradley Whitford as Don DaGradi steal every scene they're in.  Their gleeful attempts to showcase the work they've put into Mary Poppins only to be shot down by Travers make for some of the best moments of the film.  Paul Giamatti also makes the most out of a small role.  He's so good that it feels like he's a larger part of the film than he actually is.

Saving Mr. Banks isn't a stellar film.  It's competently filmed at best.  It does feature some really nice crosscutting during Travers' flashbacks.  What makes the film stand out are the wonderful performances and a really strong script.  Director John Lee Hancock was a wise choice to helm this film.  His movies are glossy and clean looking and he seems to gravitate toward sappy "true story" films such as The Alamo, The Blind Side, and The Rookie.  But finally he has a script and actors that elevate his film from merely watchable to truly good.

The music is also worth mentioning.  It's really great.  So good that Thomas Newman was nominated for an Academy Award this year for it.  It's eerily reminiscent of his score for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (also Oscar nominated) but that's not at all a bad thing.  At the very least, Saving Mr. Banks is a nice movie to listen to.

I say that you should totally check this movie out.  Maybe make it a double feature with the excellent documentary The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story which will give you a huge appreciation for those characters.  You know what?  Make it a triple feature, because you're really going to want to watch Mary Poppins after that.

7.5 out of 10