Emma Thompson does a good job

Rating: 7/10 (21 October 2014)

Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) is turning his favorite book "Mary Poppins" into a movie. The problem is that the stubborn author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) is unwilling to comprise on anything. Script writer Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford), musical writers Robert Sherman (B.J. Novak) and Richard Sherman (Jason Schwartzman) must suffer under her unbending will. Her driver Ralph (Paul Giamatti) tries to befriend her. Travers is not actually upper class British as everybody assumed but a little girl from Australia. Her parents Travers (Colin Farrell) and Margaret Goff (Ruth Wilson) had many problems. Then one day, aunt Ellie (Rachel Griffiths) comes to help the family.
It's a movie that has trouble early on when Travers is annoyingly stubborn. Scenes where a bit of comedy could be injected is inevitably deaden by her meanness. It would help if an early scene could show her suffering and therefore justify her harshness towards others. It's not simply that she is stiff and proper. That could actually be funny. There is an anger in her that needs justification. Once it digs properly into her past, she becomes more human and her character becomes more compelling. Emma Thompson does a good job especially since her character does have changes. Tom Hanks should add a bit more sour to the sweetness of his Walt Disney. The rest of the cast all do a solid job. This movie tries to straddle a more serious story with its Disneyfied version and it does it as well as expected.