SAVING MR. BANKS

A friend or family member must have recommended Disney's Saving Mr. Banks to me, because I doubt I would have selected it on Netflix on the basis of reviews.  Whoever it was, I'm sorry to give the movie a thumbs-down rating.  The flashback scenes from Helen Goff's (P L Travers' given name) childhood in Australia, with Colin Farrell in the role of her alcoholic father and Annie Rose Buckley as Helen, were the one redeeming quality of the film, but, as written, that part of the story of Helen's early life is entirely predictable.  The lovely scenery in Australia provided a stark contrast to the ugliness of Hollywood, where Travers, played by Emma Thompson, travels to supervise and edit the final version of the script for the Disney version of her Mary Poppins tale.

Thompson is excellent in her portrayal of Travers as written in the Disney script, a prim, dour, unreasonable, domineering spinster, but I wonder why an actor of Thompson's stature agreed to play the role, which is a travesty of the real-life character of the author.  During her life, Travers had intense relationships with both men and women, thus she was hardly the prim spinster as portrayed in the movie.  Though it's true Travers' personality was prickly, she led an unconventional life for a woman of her time.  The author died at the age of 96, estranged from her adopted son and grandchildren.  According to her grandchildren, Travers "died loving no one and with no one loving her." Alas.

Although Tom Hanks performance received good reviews from some critics, I cringed when I watched his labored, cartoonish, mugging, grimacing portrayal of Walt Disney.  Before writing, I searched on YouTube for videos of Disney's introductions to his TV show, wondering if he could possibly be that amateurish.  He was not, but was rather a better, smoother performer than Hanks' character in the film. Sadly, Paul Giamatti wasted his considerable talent in his role as Travers' chauffeur while she was in LA. 

Each time the movie switched from Travers' childhood in Australia back to her time in Hollywood, I couldn't help but think, "This is loathsome," and that is not often my opinion about films I have chosen to see.   I rated the movie two stars for the scenes in Australia from Traver's early life.

The psychologizing at the end of the film which suggests that Mr Banks was a stand-in for Travers' father and that the writer experienced a therapeutic cartharsis as she watched the Disney movie, with the result that her alcoholic father was redeemed in her eyes, is pure nonsense.  Travers disliked the film intensely, objected to the sweetening of the character of Mary Poppins, and refused to give Disney the rights to any of the other Mary Poppins books.