Director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) has delivered a mixed bag with Saving Mr. Banks. On the one hand, it is difficult not to like Disney and Marry Poppins in an innocuous and child-like way; it is fun, smells of nonsense and bubble gum, and reminds us that our dreams of dancing with animated penguins are never fully out of reach.
Yet, Banks is based on a story that runs far deeper than the children’s film so many have come to love, focused instead on its origins as a therapeutic means to overcome a childhood best forgotten.
Premise: Author P.L. Travers reflects on her troubled childhood after reluctantly meeting with Walt Disney, who wishes to adapt her Mary Poppins tales to film. Result: Am interesting tale that ebbs and flows between intolerable and heart-warming.
Like most authors in this world, the perception of their works and of them are typically quite different. P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) is perhaps the epitome of this dichotomy; her beloved Mary Poppins is heralded and immortalized to this day in the smiles of children everywhere, yet the author herself embodied unpleasantness and trauma.
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