It will successfully tug at your heart strings only if you ignore the one dimensional portraits of its principal protagonists

Rating: 6/10 (24 December 2013)

Walt Disney had been trying to obtain the rights to make 'Mary Poppins' into a film for years, but P.L. Travers, its highly critical author, wouldn't budge. Finally in 1961, faced with diminishing financial assets, Travers agreed to Disney's proposal with the proviso that she have the last say in regards to creative control of the script.
In 'Saving Mr. Banks', Travers is depicted as the film's 'heavy' and Disney as the understanding 'good guy'. In reality, Travers was a much more complicated person than the stereotyped martinet who puts the Disney creative team through a living hell. The film's scenarists posit a simplistic scenario in which Travers' difficult childhood is the reason she grows up to be such a sourpuss. A good part of the film features flashbacks to Travers' early childhood in Queensland, Australia, where her highly imaginative father (well-played by Colin Farrell) encourages the young Travers' creativity but cannot control his own, very sad addiction to alcohol.
The childhood flashbacks prove to be a ponderous affair and could have been easily done in one or two short but compact, all-encompassing scenes. Perhaps it would have been better to show Travers' life as she progressed into adulthood. Hardly someone who was narrow-minded (as some might get the impression here), Travers had a career as an actress and poet in her younger days, had a number of bisexual lovers, adopted a child when she was 40, spent two summers on different Native American reservations and was an astute student of the mystic, George Gurdjieff.
Disney, on the other hand, is depicted as an eccentric uncle type that everyone loved. Tom Hanks ably conveys the 'good' side of Disney but visually fails to convey his true craggy look—a visage worn down by years of smoking cigarettes (Disney would never allow himself to be shown smoking in public and this fact is actually alluded to in 'Saving Mr. Banks'). Perhaps we needed a few flashbacks also for Mr. Disney, whose dark side included flirtations during the 40s with the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, an anti- semitic, anti-communist organization (he distanced himself from the organization in the 50s) as well as testifying before the House of Un- American Activities Committee (HUAC), also in the 40s, against a number of liberal Hollywood writers, some of whom ended up being blacklisted (something that Mr. Hanks probably would have been appalled by me, had he been living as an adult, back then).
Nonetheless, it is true that while working on the film version of Mary Poppins, Travers was devoted to playing the part of a curmudgeon. Travers stipulated that the creative sessions between her and the writing team be recorded on tape; thus a good deal of the hilarious interchanges, are utilized by the films' scenarists to illustrate just how far Ms. Travers would go in preserving the integrity of her intellectual property. Sometimes her demands were off the wall like not allowing the color 'red' to be used anywhere in the film. But not everything she objected to was unreasonable. Take for example, her violent distaste for the use of animation in the film. That, actually, constitutes the 'dark moment' at the end of Act II, when Travers bolts Disney headquarters (with unsigned contract in tow) and returns to England, vowing never to see Mary Poppins completed as a movie, precisely because of Walt Disney's desire to insert a small sequence involving dancing Penguins (Having seen clips of those dancing penguins, I can completely understand why Ms. Travers was upset!).
The rest of the plot involves how Disney and company (along with the help of Travers' chauffeur, played by the always interesting Paul Giamatti) managed to soften Travers up and convince her to give up her rights, so that 'Mary Poppins' could finally get made.. Here, 'good' Disney shines; I don't know whether this actually happened, but Disney expresses empathy for Travers, when he recalls how he was very protective of his own invention, Mickey Mouse, when others were out to change his concept. I do know Disney did not fly all the way to England to convince Travers to change her mind, but Hanks gives his most impassioned speech of the movie when he links the history of his own creative career to that of Travers, during their face off in the UK.
The Disney creative team also becomes more 'sensitive' to Travers' desire to ensure that her father's legacy is not tarnished. Hence, they 'save' Mr. Banks by not making him a 'pathetic' character (a drunkard in real life) but one who loves children and always wants to help them (he fixes the kite and the Sherman Brothers, end up penning the enormously catchy, 'Let's Go Fly a Kite.")
The scenarists revert to comedy when Travers invites herself to the Mary Poppins Hollywood premiere after Disney declines to issue an invitation (Disney's fear is that she'll muck things up at the premiere, acting as a loose cannon). While Travers is watching the animated penguin sequence, you can see tears streaming down her cheeks. Disney leans over, and says something to her, to the effect that the animation didn't turn out to be so bad after all; but Travers explains she's crying because she still finds the animation repulsive.
'Saving Mr. Banks' is an affectionate look at a small piece of entertainment history. It pulls at the heart strings but one still must look at it with a jaded eye. It's a film that was vetted beforehand by the Disney Corporation, who were bent on protecting their founder's reputation at any cost. The result is a slight loss of prestige to P.L. Travers. Nonetheless, she was the one who got the last laugh, by barring any future film sequels and insisting on only British writers working on a Mary Poppins musical.