Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

[Edgy MD]

An insistent Walt Disney tries to convince, cajole, and dazzle a deeply resistant P.L. Travers to allow his studio to adapt her novel Mary Poppins for the big screen, as she reflects on her childhood from which the novel sprung.

[Frayed Knot]

Having flicked by a few minutes of MARY POPPINS recently on TV I found myself thinking one thing, that I wish Travers had succeeded in resisting old Walt's pitch.
I'm not one given to automatically rejecting all things Disney, but that was one bad movie, and was even more so, from what I understand, if you were a fan of the book.

[Edgy MD]

I'm giving it three stars out of five. Not bad, but painful in watching repeated and extended flashbacks of her childhood with her beloved self-destructive father --- and with Colin Farrell, his self destruction has to be romantic.

I'm barely old enough to remember Walt Disney as a TV figure --- he was dead by my time, but there was plenty of footage of him introducing features on The Wonderful World of Disney. And anybody who does remember him will find that Tom Hanks' characterization barely hints at the man we recall.

The real story is the torment of P.L. Travers, and Emma Thompson gives a nuanced portrayal that could have easily (and sometimes did) sink into merely a comic old pain in the ass. But now I'm afraid Disney has this new vein of gold they've struck, and will make a whole bunch of films about the story behind the story of all their evergreen films. Rudyard Kipling, Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen, brace yourselves.