Much better than just a "feel good" movie

Rating: 9/10 (27 December 2013)

I don't know exactly what I was expecting before I went to see this movie, but whatever it was, this movie greatly surpassed my expectations.
Though it does not have the innovative photography that Orson Wells used in "Citizen Kane," this movie resembles that classic in the way it slowly reveals the causes of the main character's behavior, locating them in her childhood. Along the way, Emma Thompson gives one of her best performances as the very complex Mrs. P.L. Travers, the Australian woman who wrote the Mary Poppins books. As she fights to preserve her idea of her character, and the backstory behind it that the Disney staff only slowly starts to perceive, we watch her come to terms with her childhood demons. Two of the final scenes, the one between Disney and Travers in London, and then the premiere of the movie, when Travers watches her childhood story come to life on the screen, are the highlights of a movie that has no low lights.
Excess sentimentality, which could have been so easily exploited, is always avoided.
It doesn't matter whether or not you saw the "Mary Poppins" movie or read P.L. Travers' books. You will find much to admire in this movie even if you have not.
Go! It won't make you feel good, but it will let you admire some fine acting and script writing, and that is better than a Hallmark Hall of Fame moment any day.