A Travers story and a Disney vision

Rating: 9/10 (5 January 2014)

If you are planning to watch this movie to learn more about the life of Walt Disney you will be thoroughly disappointed. Saving Mr. Banks is a movie that shows how P.L. Travers deals with the decision of letting Walt Disney make a movie about her famous nanny per say. Eventually Mary Poppins was brought to the screen but the real story is how P.L. Travers drew the inspiration for the characters in her novel. P.L. Travers in real life was a very troubled woman who was more likely to scorn and ridicule than sing and dance like Mary Poppins. From this movie you get to see the image of what laid behind one of the great child novelist of all time. You see a woman who is fractured by guilt and has a broken heart invent a character that is her childhood fantasy and let her be molded by someone her complete opposite. This story is not a happy one but a great one at that and shows a touch of the influence Disney had on the people around him. Most noticeably how much P.L. Travers rejects a spoonful of sugar in real life. A lot of the movies attention is on Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson. But the real person that carries this movie is Colin Farrell. He plays the kind but troubled father to P.L. Travers. Paul Giamatti also adds a nice touch to screen as the grounded touch of reality that P.L. Travers is looking for while visiting the magical world of Disney. The best thing to take away from this movie is that Mary Poppins was indeed just a fantasy. It was a movie that was a delight to everyone except the creator of Mary Poppins. Almost all will never know why P.L. Travers scolded the Disney team for making a movie about her beloved Mary Poppins that garnered five Academy Awards. I tend to think that Mary Poppins was never written for anyone else to read but herself. It also was a reality that P.L. Travers would like to revel in but she realizes the harsh truths of the world. It is sometimes easier to create a reality then live in one. Sadly you see this through the eyes of P.L. Travers in this movie as she strives for a mundane and lonely life.