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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

Saving Mr. Banks

SAVING MR. BANKS directed by John Lee Hancock, written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, with Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti and Colin Farrell. 125 minutes. Opens Friday (December 13). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NN


It’s 50 years since Mary Poppins hit the big screen. Trust Disney Co. to celebrate by sinking a whack of dough into a feature film about how the movie got off the ground.

Don’t expect the behind-the-scenes story of how Dick Van Dyke learned that laughable Cockney accent or how they got him dancing with cartoons. Saving Mr. Banks covers the last several months of the 20-plus years that Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) spent convincing P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), the author of the children’s books, to sell him the rights.

As the movie has it, charming Walt gets the prickly author in a room with composers Robert and Richard Sherman (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman), who try to win her over with their cheery tunes.

Central to the story, according to Disney, is that Travers has major daddy issues. The narrative moves back and forth between 1961 Los Angeles (expertly rendered, of course) and Travers’s childhood in Australia, shot through a yellow haze, where the alcoholic father she loves (Colin Farrell) dies of influenza. If we’re to believe this version of the story, it’s how the writers are presenting Mr. Banks – mean, more interested in money than in the kids – that’s bugging Travers.

Here, Travers is an old prune who never knew love and only lightens up after she comes into the orbit of the great Walt Disney. Not that I expect a Disney pic to highlight Travers’s lesbian love life or her very serious spiritual pursuits, but except for a single conversation with her U.S. driver (Paul Giamatti) about children with disabilities, this rendering is insulting.

Uncle Walt, on the other hand, is a visionary who wants to make a Mary Poppins movie to fulfill a promise to his children, and has such highly developed powers of psychological perception that he knows Travers better than she knows herself.

He certainly isn’t the chain-smoking reactionary who went on to ban males with long hair from his theme parks.

The performances are fine, especially Hanks’s, but make no mistake: Saving Mr. Banks sheds little light on the creative process. It’s all about burnishing Disney’s personal reputation.

susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole

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