A Wonderful Film

Rating: 9/10 (14 September 2015)

With her book revenues drying up and in danger of losing her home, author P.L. Travers is forced to entertain the idea of selling the movie rights to her beloved novel Mary Poppins to Walt Disney, who has been pursuing them for 20 years, in order to keep a promise he made to his daughters. So eager to make the film, Disney makes Travers an unprecedented offer: final script approval. Essentially, nothing goes in the film without her say-so. The rest of the movie is based around Travers butting heads with director Don DaGradi and the film's composers, the Sherman brothers, to make the film. Travers, the purist who based the characters on people from her own childhood, wants to make the film exactly like the book and the creative team wants to (for lack of a better term) "disneyify" it.
And that's basically it. The premise of the film is very, very simple but a plot doesn't need to be complicated in order to be good. What makes the movie so incredibly good are the performances. Emma Thompson is the go-to British actress for "hard but with a touch of heart". Tom Hanks is brilliant as Disney, effortlessly transitioning from the light hearted, child loving, "everyone call me by my first name" type boss you wish you had to the shrewd, successful business man. He'll negotiate but in the end, he's going to get the deal he wants. Not to be overlooked are Colin Farrell, who delivers the finest performance of his recent career as Travers' father in flashback sequences, and Paul Giamatti, who is just lovable as Travers' chauffeur who tries to break through Travers' stony exterior of simply not wanting, in the slightest way, to be there. Bradley Whitford, B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman all knock it out of the park as well, as DaGradi and the Sherman brothers, respectively.
If I have to nit-pick to find a flaw with the film, it would be that the ending is a work of pure fiction. If you've read anything about the real story (and there is plenty of evidence because, as it's truly depicted in the movie, Travers insisted that all creative sessions be taped), Travers hated the final product, which she insisted upon calling "Walt Disney's Mary Poppins" to distinguish it from her own work and refused to work with the studio ever again. But, if you can get past that, it's an enjoyable film with strong performances that definitely makes for a worthwhile rental.