Saving Mr Banks

SAVING MR BANKS SYNOPSIS – The story of the struggle to bring Mary Poppins to the screen It seems these days that everything has to have an “untold story “ behind it. This apparently extends to the troubled production history of Mary Poppins; one could look at this rather cynically as an extended ‘making of’ feature. I am happy to report that Saving Mr Banks is not simply, as a friend of mine described last year’s Hitchcock, “a list of the trivia page of IMDB”. Instead the film can be fairly called a battle of two equally vibrant personalities; in one corner we have PL Travers (Emma Thompson) and in the other Walt Disney (Tom Hanks). It’s not much of an exaggeration to call this battle the core strength of the film. Thompson has to portray a character that for much of the film appears difficult and obstinate, yet ensure the audience understands the emotional roots of her attitude rather than simply seeming being labelled ‘snooty’. Hanks, meanwhile, portrays a man few are familiar with outside of the statue in the magic kingdom or old archive footage. He plays the part larger than life; you can believe that this is the man who forged an animation empire and built a theme park from a swamp. He is slightly constrained by the fact that, as this is a Disney production, the script plays it very safe. Indeed some might feel that the aforementioned statue of Walt has suddenly come to life, the image of the man rather than the man himself. Of course, in fairness, the film is not supposed to be about Disney in general but this particular part of movie history. There is a third player who is also vital to the success of the film and that is Colin Farrell who portrays Travers’ father Robert, a man tormented by his personal demons. The jumps back and forth between past and present are handled very well for the most part and give the conflict in the present times an emotional context based on our knowledge of what happened in the past. The script has a good amount of wit and humour throughout it, Travers dripping sarcasm against Disney’s plain speak. In the emotional department the story of Travers’ childhood definitely has the upper hand; it just feels a lot more sincere than some of the rather contrived scenes that take place in the main story. FINAL VERDICT 7/10 it plays it safe and has a very Disney ending but it’s still extremely enjoyable.