Saving Mr. Banks

Saving Mr. Banks (2013) is about Walt Disney spending twenty years trying to get the rights to Mary Poppins. P. L. Travers does not want her book filmed. When her money runs out she agrees to come to Los Angeles, but her conditions are severe: no animation, no use of the colour red, script approval, and every meeting recorded. The meeting scenes are the best of it. Travers objects to every line, dislikes the songs, and keeps trying to explain why the character is as she is. In parallel her childhood in Australia is told. Her father was a bank clerk, a dreamer and an alcoholic. The film's claim is that Mary Poppins did not come to save the children; she came to save the father, and that father was a real man. The recording condition is true. Travers insisted every script meeting be taped and the tapes survive. Over the closing credits the film plays sections of them and her real voice is heard. Emma Thompson plays Travers and Tom Hanks plays Disney. Disney made the film themselves, and the criticism comes from there: the account is too kind to Disney and softens how much Travers actually hated the film. She wept at the premiere, which is in the film; but in fact she was furious about the animated sequence and never allowed another of her books to go to Disney. It runs 125 minutes. Good for: film history, biographical drama, and performance. Less good for: the film is about its own company and is not impartial; the childhood strand is heavy.