Saving Mr. Banks: The true story of the making of one of the most beloved Disney films of all time.

Today, I look at the acclaimed new film about the production of Mary Poppins in the mid-1960's.

Saving Mr. Banks:
In 1961, British author Pamela "P.L." Travers has agreed to finally travel to Los Angeles after 20 years to negotiate the film rights of her book Mary Poppins with producer and entrepreneur Walt Disney. When Pamela arrives, Walt warmly greets her, and states he made a promise to his daughters two decades before to adapt the book to screen, no matter how long it took. Unfortunately, Travers is very particular about how she wants the book adapted, and starts causing trouble for the production team. However, through flashbacks, it's revealed why she has such a troubled adult life. Emma Thompson gives a really fantastic performance as Travers. She's pompous, arrogant, rude, but also very relatable and I really empathized with her for most of the film. Funny enough, Thompson also starred in Nanny McPhee, which was dubbed "the new Marry Poppins" by some critics. Tom Hanks was surprisingly really awesome as Disney. Not saying he's not a great actor, but I was curious how he could pull it off, considering Walt Disney was such a huge figure in Hollywood, and is so famous and had such a distinct personality, how he would live up to expectations. He was able to capture Disney's mannerisms, and cheery disposition perfectly, and the filmmakers made the wise choice not to make him the focus of the movie, but he certainly has a large presence in it. The film also hinted at Disney's issues with smoking and lung cancer at several points in the story, but never made that a huge focus, either. Colin Farrell is really great as Pamela's father, a loving, but troubled man. Farrell is able to play two different roles back-to-back: the loving, playful father, and the alcoholic whose addiction is slowly destroying not only his body, but mind as well, and ruining the lives of his wife and children, too. Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and B.J. Novak (The Office) play the Shermans, two brothers who are the composers and lyricists for the film, who frequently clash with Travers. Richard M. Sherman, one of the brothers, served as music supervisor on this film. Speaking of music, Thomas Newman's score is actually pretty good, frequently using the tune of "Chim-Chim Cheree" from Mary Poppins over scenes of Travers' childhood. The rest of the cast includes Paul Giamatti, Ruth Wilson, Bradley Whitford, Melanie Paxson, Kathy Baker, Rachel Griffiths, and Ronan Vibert. The ending credits are cool, as they show real-life photographs from the Mary Poppins premiere and the storyboards, and has an authentic audio recording of one of the first writing team sessions. The film is actually pretty historically accurate, and there's a cool sequence at Disneyland where they recreated it to look exactly like it did in 1964. Saving Mr. Banks is an excellent movie, from the performances, to the writing, to even the production design, almost everything about this is fantastic. It's funny, charming, sad, and yes, a bit sappy, but hey, that's Disney in a nutshell. 4/5 stars.
 (Image: Wikipedia)