Excellent

Rating: 9/10 (25 April 2014)

Trying to keep his promise to his daughters to make a movie from their favorite book, Mary Poppins, Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) finds it most difficult dealing with the author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) who is extremely set in her ways regarding how the movie should be made.
I never saw MARY POPPINS so I was at a disadvantage knowing what Mary Poppins was all about (how un-American of you not seeing the movie). We see that her novel has everything to do with her childhood and alcoholic father played by Colin Farrell. It takes Walt Disney quite a while to put all that together and his little talk with Ms. Travers near the end of the movie is nothing but pure gold. For a while - mostly in the beginning - I felt that Tom Hanks was miscast, but he won me over and I was convinced he was the perfect choice to portray Walt Disney (big of you).
I do believe that Emma Thompson overplayed her part for most of the movie. I couldn't help thinking that before each scene she squirted down a few juicy lemons to make sure she came off as a priggish know-it-all uncompromising ultra-phony pseudo-intellectual. Or to put it another way she came off as a Real Bitch. And, that lemon juice did the job. But, to be fair, after that talk with Walt Disney she saved herself and I was okay with her. Yes, I knew she would turn, (hey, we all did) in time, to becoming a normal human being, but it did take a while.
Anne Rose Buckley who played Ginty when Mrs Travers was a child should have gotten an Oscar Nomination for something. She was perfect.
An excellent supporting cast of Ruth Wilson as Mrs. Goff (Travers' mother), Colin Farrell as Ginty's father (Travers Goff), Paul Giamatti as Ralph who was Ms. Travers' driver in LA, Bradley Whitford as Don DaGradi and B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman as the Sherman brothers who along with DaGradi performed all the musical rehearsals (really good too) for the movie.
The technica-color aspect of the movie for most of the first half seemed to be a colorized version seen when movies were only made in black and white back in the day. Or maybe there was an over-abundance of make-up on the characters. Take your pick.
Though I never saw the MARY POPPINS movie, this movie provided the connections between Mrs Travers' childhood and the Mary Poppins story. And, now the title SAVING MR BANKS makes sense.
The little talk near the end, that Walt Disney made to P.L. Travers should go onto Youtube (there are some things there , but not that talk) so we can hear it over and over again. If you watch this movie on DVD, play back that talk a few times. It won't get old and it was the whole essence of the movie as far as I am concerned. I don't know if the real Walt Disney actually spoke those words but he should have but having known many nice things about Walt Disney he may very well have spoken those words. They were pure gold. (9/10)
Violence: No. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Should kids watch: That's up to the parents. We do see some uncomfortable scenes when
Ginty sees her father in an alcoholic state. Also Ginty saves her mother from
committing suicide in the lake. Language: No.