REVIEW: Saving Mr. Banks

Courtesy of Disney

First, a word of warning to those interested in what actually happened when Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers worked with Walt Disney to adapt her beloved book for the big screen: Saving Mr. Banks isn’t a documentary.  In fact, it’s about as real as the magical nanny herself. But that doesn’t make it a bad movie; that makes it an intriguing movie with troubling elements.

The film establishes that Disney (Tom Hanks, perhaps the only modern actor capable of playing the American icon) has been trying to keep a promise to his daughters – that he’d make a Mary Poppins movie – for 20 years, but the famously difficult Travers (Emma Thompson) has consistently rejected him. But then her books stop selling and she finds herself in a difficult financial situation.

With no other options, Travers reluctantly agrees to travel to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks to hear the studio’s plan for her creation. What she sees absolutely horrifies her. Screenwriter Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) has turned her stern main character into a rosy-cheeked angel, while songwriters Robert and Richard Sherman (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman) have her belting platitude-filled anthems. And, worst of all, Disney thinks it’s great to see her cavorting with Dick Van Dyke and animated penguins.

The experience further convinces her that a Hollywood version of Mary Poppins is a terrible idea, but that’s when Disney realizes that the character is more than just a product of Travers’ imagination. Mary is part of the way she copes with a traumatic childhood involving alcoholic and suicidal parents (played by Colin Farrell and Ruth Wilson). Once he makes that connection, the mogul is able to connect with the author on a deeper level, meaning the movie might just happen after all.

Actually, from what I’ve read about the contentious battle between Travers and everyone involved in crafting the classic Julie Andrews film, Saving Mr. Banks director John Lee Hancock, along with screenwriters Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, gets many things right. That’s laudable considering the film is a Disney production and the studio is notorious for keeping its image as squeaky-clean as possible.

The brilliant Thompson does typically exceptional work here. She doesn’t make Travers likable, which would be a mistake. Instead, she allows viewers to understand why the prickly author views life as she does and gets them to accept her anyway. Most of us might not want to interact with Travers on a daily basis, but Thompson’s performance makes the character compelling enough to spend a couple of hours with.

Hanks is understandably hamstrung by the material – he can’t exactly exhibit his character’s more notorious personality traits, but attentive viewers will notice that the smile and friendly gestures he puts on for Travers never quite reach his sharp eyes. Still, it’s a great performance even if it’s more of a supporting one than the trailers suggest. (In actuality, Disney wasn’t even present for the meetings with Travers. He made sure he was out of town.)

Supporting work from Whitford, Novak and Schwartzman is also strong. They’re crucial to the film’s best scenes, which highlight the creative process in a far more painful and accurate way than Hollywood usually allows. Farrell is also good as a father doing his best while life brutally beats him down. He’s by far the best element of the film’s unnecessary flashbacks.

The glimpses of Travers’ childhood are annoying because they neatly explain every single reason the author is so cold – I’m not sure that’s how trauma works. So the film comes to a grinding narrative halt every time the focus shifts away from the primary story. More troubling is the author’s reaction to the finished film, which is significantly altered by unsettling artistic liberties within the screenplay (I’m guessing to achieve a Disney-mandated happy ending).

The real-life Travers was less-than-pleased with the finished product, going so far as to specify in her will that no sequel could ever be made and no American hands could touch her work ever again. That’s not at all what viewers will take away from Saving Mr. Banks, thanks to the story’s tendency to persuade the audience to side with a major corporation over the artist who created the work.

Let’s just say that if Travers hated what Disney did to her beloved Mary Poppins, she’d downright loathe what the studio does with her life story.

Saving Mr. Banks is rated PG-13 for thematic elements including some unsettling images. 

Grade: B+