Movie Review: Saving Mr. Banks

"You think Mary Poppins is saving the children, Mr. Disney?  Oh, dear..." 

At Christmastime, I went and saw the movie, Saving Mr. Banks, with my mother and sister.  And now, almost two months later, I am finally getting around to the movie review.  Pathetic, I know.  But they always say, "better late than never."  In my mind, I'm  not quite sure I believe that.  However, I will take it, because it's more convenient anyways for me this time.

Saving Mr. Banks is the story of how they got P.L. Travers (a perfectly awful woman) to consent to the making of the Mary Poppins movie.  Or, rather, it's Disney's spin on it, based mostly off the memories of Richard Sherman.  Just have to acknowledge that not everyone on the internet agrees this is what happened.  But every historical film is subject to that. 

The 1960s convincing of P.L. Travers is interspersed with a rendering of this woman's childhood as Helen Goff in Australia.  The film is light, touching in its message, and a good exploration of how we love imperfect people.  Everyone is imperfect, and I hope everyone loves people, so we all love imperfect people.  Some of us love more imperfect people than others, but it's an interesting concept.  It's also one that we don't see explored really that much in modern cinema.  It seems like a lot of characters in movies these days feel entitled to hating their parents because they were bad people.  But some parents are good loving parents, but vastly imperfect.

I enjoyed the dialogue, the message, and Emma Thompson was talented at making a wholly unlikeable woman relate-able (I made it up, and I'm not unmaking it up).  Tom Hanks is like Disney reincarnated, and it was fun and enjoyable.  I guess enjoyable is our word today.  My writing isn't very inspired today, it would seem.

My criticism would just be that it is part propaganda.  Disney is trying to reinvent itself a bit right now, and this is probably part of that project.  But, like I said, there is no such thing as a perfectly fair historical retelling.

I would go to 5 stars, though I have a feeling it's not going to go down in history.  It was, however, listed as an Academy Awards Snub by the youtube channel Screen Junkies (in their Snubs and Flubs video--what nominations shouldn't have happened, and who did they snub).