Saving Mr. Banks was a nice, if a bit fictionalized, account of P.L. Travers' visit to the Walt Disney studio and her encounters with the man herself

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2014)

Just watched this film with my movie theatre-working friend who is a die-hard Disney fan (mainly because of his constant visits to Disney World). So he loved this movie that he previously watched before and I liked it very much even though I knew that many scenes were fictionalized like the idea that Ms. P.L. Travers would eventually love what Walt did to her character Mary Poppins on film. As Uncle Walt, Tom Hanks does justice to the man who created and voiced Mickey Mouse. The studio even allowed a scene of him putting out a cigarette! Emma Thompson as Ms. Travers was also good though it does take some getting used to seeing her be such a stick-in-the-mud most of the time. The most charming scenes are those involving the songwriters, Richard and Robert Sherman (Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak), and their attempts to entertaining Ms. Travers while the whole thing is being recorded at her command as well as her conversations with her limo driver played by Paul Giamatti. Then there are those scenes of Ms. Travers childhood in Australia that delivers some heartbreak concerning her alcoholic father, played compellingly by Colin Farrell. All in all, I highly enjoyed Saving Mr. Banks.