View Saving Mr. Banks. Enjoy it for what it is—another Walt Disney fairytale.

Rating: 4/10 (5 January 2014)

Saving Mr. Banks is a nice film: nothing outstanding and nothing inefficacious. It's not much fun either. The anchor that keeps this film from soaring is the inherent conflict in the story. To get permission from Mrs. Travers, Disney has to grant her total creative control over the film. Unfortunately, Mrs. Travers is a prig. Her demons thwart Disney in all phases of preproduction: scripting scenes, musical selections, and art-direction suggestions. She nit picks every detail to a faretheewell. For three examples: no red color in any scene, change the leading man, and no animation—a deal breaker in her contract. What we do not know is how much of this narrative is fiction or how much is factual.
Nonetheless, what's maddingly confusing is: why would Walt Disney grant such total creative control to this neurotic person who does not know the difference between "a sprocket hole and an f-stop" in motion-picture scripting and production, as it were. Why would he risk millions of dollars and his studio's reputation on such a prodigious gamble with a rank psychotic novice to whom he has to kowtow? It does not make sense, no matter the actual or fictional facts. Accordingly, such a crucial and addlebrained decision by Hollywood's consummate producer cast a pall of doubt over the entire narrative. However, in truth, he'd promised his two daughters that he would produce a film based on Mary Poppins. Accordingly, he was driven by his promise. Notwithstanding, logic and business sense demands that at some point he should have cancelled the project. (Fortunately he did not and Mary Poppins was a great film.)
Mrs. Travers' psychotic mien does not engender empathy. We cannot like or identify with her, and without audience empathy, the character is flawed. Perhaps this is a real-life portrayal. Nonetheless, the script could have eased her irrational obstinacy to make her character more empathetic. Occasionally, we see a scene that hints at PL's empathetic humanity: she dances a few steps with Richard Sherman, sits on the grass and chats with her chauffeur, and finally decides to enter the bar at the Beverly Hills hotel—perhaps to order an adult beverage, or to talk with a patron. Alas! She fails on both accounts. She orders tea. And with true cinema-magic, the bartender just happens to have a silver service under the bar and complies with her request.
Another key player that drags parts of the film in to a morass of negativism is the alcoholic Travers Goff—PL's father. He loves PL and dotes over her, but in the end embarrasses her. Seemingly, he ignores his wife (who attempts suicide), new-born child, and PL's younger sister. He dies of some unknown reason related to alcoholism. It's here that PL's neurosis is conceived. Clearly, Goff is a flawed character on whom we look askance. No empathy here. Good riddance, we might suggest. For reasons not clear, the fatherless family seems to prosper enough to hire a nanny, Aunt Ellie: PL's Mary Poppins character no doubt.
For the record: I checked my atlas and found that the Goff's home in Allora, the "End of the railroad line," is about 120 miles southwest of Brisbane, Queensland. Having spent some time Down Under, I cringed at the scenes of PL and her father frolicking in the bush. This area has a surfeit of highly-venomous reptiles: the Brown, the Tiger, and the Tiapan, for examples.
I would suggest that the scenes in Australia are surplus. The film would have more coherence without the frequent crosscutting between "now" and "Australia." PL's neurosis could have been readily established with other techniques early in the scenario.
Other points that puzzle us are:  Answering P L's question, we're told that Robert Sherman was shot. Really? By whom? Why? When? There are no answers. Seems to me this is a key script point. If not, why include it?  PL is an Aussie. Why does she keep it a secret? Most Aussie's I've met are damn proud of their heritage—even those who are the prodigy of the inmates from the former penal colony.  Why does PL use a nom de plume? Her birth name is Helen Goff.
 Towards the end, Disney, frustrated with PJ's shenanigans, confronts her in her London flat with a cogent analysis of her psychosis, and he concludes with the dictate that she ought to forgive her father. Voila! Pamela Lyndon Travers' demons are excised, Mary Poppins is completed, and is a phenomenal success. This scene stretches credulity: by what chicanery did Walt Disney phantom the details of PJ's childhood? How did Disney garner his psychological skills? Why should Travers accept the analysis from the armature psychologist, Disney?