More than a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of one of Disney’s classics, Saving Mr. Banks tells an excellent tale of a woman who can’t let go of the past. Saving Mr. Banks is headlined by an outstanding performance by Emma Thompson, and terrific supporting roles by Tom Hanks and Paul Giamatti. While the schmaltz is covered up with too frequent flashbacks, Saving Mr. Banks is a perfect family film that is a must-see.

Saving Mr. Banks is about author P.L. Travers, the writer of Mary Poppins. Walt Disney has approached her, hoping to gain the rights to her book to make a film about it. We all know how this story pans out in the end, and this ends up to be Saving Mr. Banks’s biggest surprise. We know how it begins and how it ends, but the pieces in between slowly fall into place over the course of the 120-minute movie. As Disney convinces Travers to give him the rights, taking her to Disneyland and trying to win her over, we learn more about her past as a child in Australia.

Through a use of flashbacks, director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) manages to tell a tale both emotionally ridden and at times humorous. The flashbacks show a young Travers growing up in Australia. Her father is ill and her mother is broken down. This lays the foundation for what we learn as Disney tries to coerce her into giving him creative license. This use of flashbacks gives a unique parallel to the present day scenario, as important details become relevant and the pieces to the puzzle fall into place.

You’ll never know what important piece of information from Travers’s past will come into play, and this is the film’s biggest strength, as well as its biggest weakness. There are simply too many flashbacks, plain and simple. If the film employed a more prologue/epilogue method of storytelling, it wouldn’t feel as disjointed when it bounces back between past and present. It hits you with too many emotional moments to make you want to care, and when these details come up, sometimes it feels like a cop-out at a cheap surprise, almost contrived at some points. Showing Travers’s aversion to pears is seemingly irrelevant in her dealings with Mr. Disney, but director Hancock seems like he must hit us with a surprise around every corner.

Besides a too frequent use of flashbacks, however, the present day 1960s scenes are very enjoyable, and they pack a punch thanks to some incredible performances. Emma Thompson is a brilliant P.L. Travers, rightly earning her Golden Globe nominations. She starts out more reserved and blunt in her negotiations with Disney and the writers, as she makes changes to the script to honor her past. But she eventually opens up after a trip to Disneyland and hearing some of the film’s music. Tom Hanks’s acting helps convince her a lot, too, as well as the audience. He plays an outstanding Disney. At times I had a hard time telling Hanks and Disney apart. He was that good. He commands the role with audacity, as he must convince both Travers and the audience that he is the right man for the job. Supporting roles courtesy of Paul Giamatti help round out the cast. He plays Travers’s limo driver, who seems unimportant upon first glance, but he helps Travers make her final decision to let go of her story. Colin Farrell performs “well enough” as Travers’s father in the flashback scenes, but some cheesy dialogue and his over acting never really impressed me.

The film is quite funny, at times. Both Thompson and Hanks employ some great uses of humor, especially Thompson seeing what Disney has crafted for the first draft. Scenes in the rehearsal room stand out as the most memorable, especially when Travers first hears “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.” Two of the film’s other surprises come from Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak, who play two of the film’s writers/songwriters. They have some great lines, and stand out in some of the more dull scenes. I’ve heard some reviewers chide the film for its overexaggeration and overcoating with Disney schmaltz, but they must be blinded by cynicism, because the film honors both Travers’s legacy as well as Disney’s, despite being made by the studio itself.

Saving Mr. Banks is quite a surprise. Other than a cheap use of way too frequent flashbacks and disjointed storytelling, the film manages to tell both an emotional story as well as a humorous one. Performances by Hanks, Thompson, and Giamatti all stand out as memorable, and the film does a great service to both Travers and Disney. The film isn’t entirely for Disney fans, and the average viewer will definitely love the film, but it also throws in minuscule details that Disney and Mary Poppins fans will enjoy. Make sure to stay during the credits, too, or else you’ll miss out on some of the best after-credits sequences of the year.

Overall: 3 stars out of 4



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