Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

Walt Disney spent the better part of 20 years trying to get the rights to make a film version of Mary Poppins, a book and a character much beloved by his own daughters. These efforts finally culminated in a series of meetings in 1961 between Poppins creator P.L. Travers and various folks at the Disney studios, where they hammered out an agreement acceptable to the very reluctant author. Tapes of these meetings survive and form much of the basis for Saving Mr. Banks, a film not so much about the making of 1964 Disney classic, as about how it came to be.

Tom Hanks is perfectly cast as Walt Disney, sunny and ingratiating, but shrewd. He is surrounded by a capable supporting cast including Bradley Whitford, Kathy Baker, Melanie Paxson, and B. J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman as the Sherman brothers, veritable music making machines for Disney from the 50's through the 70's. The bustling Disney studio and the sunny, optimistic California of the early 60's are well represented here and a treat. But the central character is Travers, a difficult woman, at least in the context of signing over her treasured creation.

The events of the Disney negotiations are counterpointed with a flash back narrative of Travers, born Helen Lyndon Goff, childhood in Australia circa 1906. Her father Travers Robert Goff, from whom she would take her pen name, was a fanciful and alcoholically Irishman, with whom she would have a loving, but ultimately scaring relationship. The genesis of Mary Poppins seemed to come from a woman who stayed with the family to help care for her father when he was dying of tuberculosis. Colin Farrell does an excellent job of playing Travers Goff, and the whole flash back portion of the film has an unexpectedly dark tone, contrasting with the sunny ambiance of the 1960's sequences.

Emma Thompson plays the grown Travers, and its a perfect part for her, she gets to be all persnickety. While the scenes with Walt, of which there are surprisingly few, are of course central to the story, Paul Giamatti is brought in as an affable limo driver with a disabled daughter as yet another counterpoint to the grumpy Travers, and this is actually pulled off as a nice little arc. The movie ends with an emotional catharses experienced by Travers watching the films depiction of Mr. Banks, a surrogate for her father, finding a redemption his real counterpart never quite received in life. The fact that Travers was always luke warm at best about the film adaption is somewhat brushed over, but hey its a Disney movie. Watch for Mary Poppins Returns, coming this Christmas. ***1/2