I’ll start this review by saying that I saw Saving Mr Banks within twenty four hours
of seeing The Counsellor, so the
swing in tone and content may have bled through into how much I enjoyed this
film. One that is infinitely easier to get into and far less unsettling. Unless
you have some sort of beef with Mickey Mouse.
Saving Mr Banks follows
the story of how Walt Disney and his team tried to make Mary Poppins into a
film. Focusing on the story of P L Travers when she was a young girl living in
Australia and the present day (early sixties) in which she has travelled to Los
Angeles to work on the film and to be persuaded to hand over the rights to Walt
Disney.
There are a lot of good things going for this film, one of
the biggest is the script by Kelly Marcel, which knows exactly when to send us
back in time to the days in the outback with her father. The moments that
influence the older Travers don’t immediately precede or appear right after,
instead we are given all of these ticks, memories and clues into how these
experiences have changed her. We are asked to put it together for ourselves.
The two leads Emma Thompsons as P L Travers and Tom Hanks as
Walt Disney have great chemistry together and their back and forth squabbles
and arguments are a joy to watch. The supporting cast really fill out the
world, bringing it to life and giving Travers different personality to interact
with and put down in a amusingly upper class way.
Hanks, who has slightly less time than Thompson I think on
screen, gives us a likeable but layered Disney, something behind the good
natured and always smiling man you would expect. This is less a case of
imitation as taking bits and pieces of the real man and making fit into this
story. Hanks a true great of the screen gives you nothing less than this and
while this is one of his best in years, if he is to take home an Oscar this
year, it will surely be for Captain
Phillips.
Thompson dominates every scene she is, in that way becoming
every bit the woman she is portraying. She isn’t immediately likeable, in fact
for long parts of the film it is in some way hard to sympathise with her at
all. But maybe that’s because we know how it all ends up and she obviously doesn’t.
As Travers begins to loosen, not by much though, Thompson plays up more of the
vulnerability and longing for something she has long lost.
Colin Farrell is given one of the most interesting roles he
has had in many years, as Travers’ father. A supporting father who encourages
his daughters’ creativity and imagination, but suffers from a kind of chronic
alcoholism. This is shown quite early on, so it’s not a major spoiler. The
creative team of the two musicians The Sherman Brothers and the screenwriter
are instantly sympathetic, stuck in the rehearsal room with the rude and
incessant Travers. There best ideas are crushed and the film they have been
playing ripped to sheds.
Saving Mr Banks is
a great family film and one that people who both have and haven’t seen Mary Poppins will enjoy.
