To be a bit defensive of Disney, the script was written independently and only later did Disney become involved. It was not written for Disney. I haven’t seen the original drafts but it is my understanding that what was produced is pretty close to what was originally written (the script was well known for being on the Black List of best scripts not in production until Disney bought it).
And considering that it was a Disney production I was happy that the Walt character is left relatively flat instead of going full hagiography (and while they didn’t let him be shown smoking I was surprised they referenced it and, with Walt’s coughing throughout hinted at it being the cause of his death just a few years later).
Possibly because it might have required too much rewriting of history when they were wanting to focus on the daddy issues?
[spoiler]
In the movie, she moves in to help care for her dying father (promising and failing to make everything right when the dad dies). It is during this period that Travers’s mother attempts suicide and is prevented by Travers herself.
In reality however, it was well after her father had died that her mother announced one night she was going to go drown herself and left the kids at home alone. That attempt failed (without interference from Travers) and after that the aunt moved in to help take care of things.[/spoiler]
I haven’t read the books in a lonnng while, but my impression is that the Mr and Mrs Banks were pretty much minor characters in the books. Mary P doesn’t come to “save” anyone, she just comes in the first chapter, takes the children on adventures, denies each adventure after, and then leaves at the last chapter. Repeat three or four times.
The movie certainly does sugar-coat the character, but there’s no way the books could be made into a “faithful” movie. No one would watch more than about 15 minutes. She’s much too unpleasant a character to support a movie. Nowadays, since we’ve gone through TV series like SOPRANOS and MEDICI with totally nasty characters, I suppose they could do a TV series, with two adventures each 30-minute episode. Disney (or whoever) was absolutely right in adding the over-story of Mr Banks’ redemption, and in allowing Mary to smile and be cheerful. (In the books, she certainly never smiles, but she does sniff in disapproval a lot.)
The character of the aunt in the movie was definitely the Mary P of the books.
In terms of sugar-coating P L Travers, the movie ends with her crying at the movie, presumably over Mr Banks losing his job. However, the movie shows nothing of the afterwards, when Travers denounced Disney and refused to deal with them again, claimed she was mistreated, etc etc. The movie shows everyone bending over backwards to deal with a thoroughly unpleasant woman.
No, the movie isn’t history. Yes, the movie is the Disney-studios version. Nonetheless, we found it very enjoyable and even moving, with great performances (although I agree there was a little too much of Colin Farrel looking beset.)
Except that Saving Mr. Banks isn’t about Mary Poppins. It’s much more about the relationship between movie P.L. Travers and her movie father (regardless of how that relationship actually was in real life), and how that relationship came to bear on Travers giving Disney the rights to make the** Mary Poppins** film.
I can understand the points both Movie Mogul and Rollo Tomasi make about the movie, but I enjoyed it very much. The flashbacks were indeed getting to be a bit unwelcome by the end, but Farrell did a great job with his character. And even if Disney’s final plea to Travers was complete movie fantasy baloney … it was a terrific scene played terrifically by Hanks. Not to mention, Emma Thompson was simply great as Travers.
I used to work with a guy who would constantly nitpick movies and TV shows, about how the events and characters portrayed hadn’t been like that in real life or how things hadn’t actually happened the way the movie explained it. I had to keep telling him, “It wasn’t a documentary, Glenn.”
I think you have to take your entertainment for what it is and what it’s trying to do. Does it succeed at that? Did you personally enjoy it? That’s what makes something good.
Not an amazing movie, but adorable and fun. Colin Farrel was excellent in the flashback sequences and Tom Hanks did quite well, too.
No Academy Awards deserved here, but a nice enough movie. Actually, the score is nomination worthy(the new music, not the adapted score from Mary Poppins).
This is basically my experience (though I wouldn’t say its the best film I’ve seen all year - I give that to Gravity). I didn’t expect the backstory and how incredible it was woven into the plot. Just floored me how good it was, and I was just expecting a merely above average film.
That New Yorker article claims that Mrs. Banks’ actions at the end of the movie (using her suffragette banner as a tail for the kite) means that she’s abandoning her cause. I never thought that to be the case. She’s not hiding the banner from her husband any more, and she’s actually advertising it in a different way–plenty of people are going to see that kite!
My mom and I saw it on Christmas day. I’m a big fan of historical fiction so I thought the movie was good but it was depressing as fuck. For Christmas. Wish I’d seen Frozen instead.
I saw it a few weeks ago at a free preview; I wouldn’t have gone to see it otherwise.
I was expecting the whole film to be a battle between Travers and Disney, and I so much would have preferred it that way. I enjoyed everything with Emma Thompson and hated being taken out of that story for the flashbacks. I’m not a fan of flashbacks in the first place, but there was a really unsettling vibe during these. After the first or second one (where they ride the horse), I thought her daddy issues were about something other than his drinking.
I don’t remember liking Mary Poppins, the book, well enough to slog all the way through it, but I remember attempting to watch the movie. The movie scarcely even has a plot, so much as it exists as a coat-hanger or skeleton structure onto which to hang an incessant lineup of song-and-dance numbers. I couldn’t get through it either.
I’m hoping Saving Mr. Banks will be better than either of those.
[spoiler]Yes, the movie depicts her as thoroughly unpleasant. But the Disney people don’t bend over backwards to bow to her wishes. They bend over backwards to patronize her. They want (and get ) her to sign off on their plans without changing anything. The script they have prior to her input is essentially the movie that they end up making, with the one concession they make being to reform the character of Mr. Banks and add the Fly a Kite finale.
All the other things she demands: a less ostentatious house, a more dignified and talented actor than Van Dyke, no red, no singing, no made-up words, no animation… are included against her wishes.
Ultimately, I think that the speech Disney gives her in her living room about letting go of the story, letting someone else take it away from her is a powerful one, and it’s one that does justice both to our love of the Mary Poppins movie and Travers’ obvious distaste for Disney’s cartoonification of a very personal story.
She cries at the movie because she has such a strong emotional connection to the story, but when asked if she’s ok, she again points out how much she hates the animation.[/spoiler]
Took the family to see it last night. Couple of things struck me:
The stuffed Disney characters in her suite included a Winnie-the-Pooh bear, a feature I though was anachronistic, given that it was 1961, and Pooh Bear wasn’t going to look like that to anyone buying merchandise for another six years.
One of the trays of nosh in the office where Travers worked every morning with the collaborators had a stack of Hostess Ding Dongs in their familiar aluminum foil wrappers (another anachronism for another product introduced in 1967).
In the trailers Toms Hanks as Disney seems to have a strange quasi-southern accent, nothing at all like the real Walt Disney. It makes me twitchy enough that I’m not sure that I would be able to ignore it and enjoy the film.
But while I don’t think he ended up sounding anything at all like Disney (despite what the press materials said about how hard he worked on it), it didn’t bother me in the movie itself.