Micitype Pretty Good

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

dierregi The main plot is about Walt Disney trying to make the Mary Poppins movie. Disney had to get rights from the novels' author, an unpleasant woman named Helen Goff who went by the pen name of PL Travers. Thompson plays Travers as an über-British, frosty, frigid spinster who hated everything about the movie and spread misery around her.The secondary plot explains why Travers was such a b—tch. She had a traumatic childhood and her alcoholic, banker father died when she was 7. Therefore, the big revelation is that Mary Poppins is not actually about Mary, but about Mr. Banks who stands for Travers's father and get a happy ending instead of dying young. What it is not explained is why a childhood movie is about bankers and why it is titled Mary Poppins, since Mary is actually a secondary character.Moreover, the revelation about Travers's past does not excuse her. Travers' miserable childhood does not make her more sympathetic. More misery is added by a scene during which Disney trades stories of his own miserable childhood, trying to get Travers on board - or maybe to prove that even an unhappy child can grow into a happy adult...Disney did not invite her to the premiere of Mary Poppins and I can fully understand his uneasiness about having this controlling and ungrateful woman around, to spread more misery.The whole story was not worth a movie, especially not a very long one as this. The Disney- Travers relationship is unpleasant from start to finish (he is manipulative, she is stubborn and unyielding). The father-daughter history is very depressing.

Kingslaay Many of us consider Marry Poppins a classic, one that has endured and still entertains audiences today. Saving Mr Banks takes an interesting look at the author behind Mary Poppins and the film adaption. Not many would be familiar with the background and difficult personality of the author. We also learn the inspiration behind the timeless classic. The film excels in getting you to dislike and maybe even hate Emma Thompson's character, P. L. Travers. She is disagreeable, stubborn and peculiar. Even though she is in need of income to save her home she is not willing to make a deal until all her demands are met. One important demand is the absence of animation which is central to many Disney films. Over the course of the film she warms up to the writers and Walt Disney who write the songs that we all know and love. When she cancels the deal and flies back to the U.K. she is visited again by none other than Walt Disney. We learn that her hopes for the film as in the books were not to save the children but their father which fictitiously based on her father. Mary Poppins was the nanny who saved everything that her real nanny or aunt could not do in her life. She lost her father as shown in her flashbacks. The real reason behind this classic creation endears her to the audience as we are told Mr Banks will be not just be saved he will be honored. While Mary Poppins brought joy to many to many children's lives the author also sought to bring joy and solace to her inner child and fathers memory. Excellent acting from Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Thompson who deliver star performances.

xxharrison Disney and Poppins were part of my childhood, to be sure. Doesn't mean I want to go back there, but this was a pleasant excursion. Thompson and Hanks are perfect as the leads. Interesting that two characters who, these days, garner mixed reviews are so sympathetically rendered, but in a real way. At the centre of this, Mary Poppins is retold from the perspectives of its creator, the scriptwriters and musicians who had to work with her (tough work) and Disney himself. Real life, real and imagined pasts and the world of Poppins are successfully intertwined. Ultimately, this is a film which knows what film-making is about, communicating a real story in a creative, entertaining and ultimately moving way.

dromasca Here is an interesting situation. I love cinema and I like the 'movies about movies' genre which I believe has provided some of the best films in the history of the seventh art. Saving Mr. Banks is however a film about a movie that I did not like - Mary Poppins. I was a kid when it was released but I was already disliking melodramas and I failed to be captivated by musicals unless they included my kind of favorite music which was pop and rock. I am still looking for a film by the Walt Disney studios that is credible and contains enough emotion and less sugar to make me feel good during the screening and after it. Director John Lee Hancock's film about the making of Mary Poppins could not change my mind. From my point of view the film inherits many of the flaws of the original. Of course, fans of the original may like Saving Mr. Banks as well, but I do not belong to the category.The period is the early 60s, the action takes place in London and California, but do not expect anything about the emergence of the pop or hippies to show up in screen. The background is actually exactly the world against which the pop and hippie movements revolted. Famous British writer P.L. Travers goes to Los Angeles to work on the screen adaptation of her novel by famous producer (and theme parks owner, and author of the most charming animated cartoons in history) Walt Disney and his studios. The cultural clash between the two personalities although filled of stereotypes is the funniest part of the film, with the feelings of the estranged author surrounded by what she considers the Californian kitsch superbly brought to screen by Emma Thompson. I like much less the parallel story line about the childhood of the author where the authors of the script of Saving Mr. Banks sought the 'deep' motivation of the novel and the resulting film. All this parallel run of the stories looked to me melodramatic and superficial. The scene that is supposed to be the emotional peak, with Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) flying to London to reverse the decision of the author and obtain the screening rights includes a short speech that is close to ridiculous.We all know the end of the story. Mary Poppins was eventually made, it was the first 'serious', big stars, big screen movie of the studios which have achieved in the decades after a front range position with combinations of the animated and actors movies, becoming champions of the 'family films' genre. The film about its making gathers a lot of acting talents, beside Hanks (who must have put about 15 extra kilos for this role) and Thompson we have Colin Farrell in the role of the loving but failed father of the writer and Paul Giamatti in a charming supporting role of the only Californian that P.L. Travers ended by really liking.'Saving Mr. Banks' eventually delivers what some people and the producers expect from it - squeezing tears. It does it however the same way the original 'Mary Poppins' film did - using the melodrama tools. So it's a melodrama about the making of a melodrama. Nothing more, a little less. Mary Poppins had the music.