Review: Saving Mr. Banks

The film paints Disney and Travers as ridiculously self-obsessed (He carries signed headshots?) and ridiculously stubborn (No animated penguins?), respectively. However, the movie is obviously intended to cast each in a different light. Travers is chronically British in her distaste for physical contact and her penchant for tea. Disney is charmingly American in his desire for excess and his refusal to let "no" stop him from getting his way. Travers is portrayed as silly for being unwilling to give in to the Disney-fication of her book. In reality, Travers's fight for her say was intense but relatively futile. Produced by Walt Disney Studios, “Saving Mr. Banks” applies a glaze of heartwarming cheer to the true story and fires it in the Disney kiln. There’s even a scene in which Walt takes Travers to Disneyland to ride on a carousel.

Although the story isn't factual, it doesn't detract from the film itself. Much in the way that Disney adapted Travers’s novel in 1964 to make the classic and undeniably wonderful “Mary Poppins,” it adapted Travers’s likely hellish experience of that process into a touching family film. The movie is chock-full of flashbacks to young Travers’s (Annie Rose Buckley) childhood in Australia living with her alcoholic father (Colin Farrell). At first, we feel as if we're getting a peek into her psyche, a look at why she could be so foolish as to refuse Walt Disney's offer. But five or six of these scenes in, it becomes apparent that it's impossible for every action or song to trigger such a response in her. It is a Disney movie, and as such, the connections between her own life and her attachment to making the Banks children’s father a likable and forgivable man (hence the title) need to be spelled out for us.

It’s no surprise Thompson garnered a Golden Globe nomination for her role. She poignantly portrayed what could easily have become a caricature of a passionate artist. Thompson clearly offers the best performance of the film. Despite a superfluous Paul Giamatti, the supporting cast does a fair job as well. B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman play the Sherman brothers, the men behind the music of “Mary Poppins.” The two add a snarky and comedic element to a film that, without them, could lack balance between the dark childhood memories and Disney charm. Additionally, Hanks gives life to the Disney we want, if not the one who actually existed.

“Saving Mr. Banks” is a touching story about embracing the magic of childhood and allowing yourself to have a little fun. Though this sentimentality is certainly far from the truth, it’s a falsehood I want to believe. It’s bound to make you cry—and want to fly a kite.