Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

IMDb plot summary: Author P.L. Travers reflects on her childhood after reluctantly meeting with Walt Disney, who seeks to adapt her Mary Poppins books for the big screen.
Directed by John Lee Hancock. Starring Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, and Paul Giamatti.

I'm going to be setting aside the question of what was accurate and what wasn't -- I haven't done much looking into the story and don't feel like I can comment confidently on that. What I will say is that the story they chose to tell absolutely worked for me, on nearly every level by the end.

On the one hand, Mary Poppins is one of my all-time favorite Disney films. It is an incredible story with surprising depth that nearly always brings me to tears when I watch it. It is VERY different from the books, though (I love them as well, just differently). But as I watched, I found myself empathizing very strongly with P. L. Travers, as a writer (and not exactly a social butterfly). She has definite opinions and emotional ties to her work and is terrified at the thought of giving someone else control over it for fear that they will ruin something she holds so dearly. That struggle back and forth to find something that ties together whimsical Disney magic with the no-nonsense Mary Poppins of the books hit home for me, and I found myself fascinated and emotionally engrossed in the story as it unfolded.

(Some fairly vague spoilers ahead about plot points in the second half of the movie.)

For the first half of the movie, I was uncertain about all of Travers' back story, as it wasn't nearly as interesting to me as where she was now, as well as portraying her as too emotionally broken and too easily fixed by the magic of Disneydom... but all that changed in the scene when Disney went to visit Travers in her home in England. Suddenly everything clicked into place for me as it had for Walt at this point in the movie -- the "She came to save their father" line reminded me that, yes, at the heart of the Mary Poppins movie is Mr. Banks himself, not Mary Poppins or the children or Bert.

Though I know Travers' real reaction at the premiere bore very little resemblance to the one in the movie, I loved the way they ended it. Sure, it's Disneyfied and tidied up from reality, but as a story, it *works*.

(/Spoilers)

A quick note on the acting: Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks both do an incredible job. Thompson has an incredible ability to play introspective, seemingly apathetic introverts in a way that really connects with me (see also Remains of the Day and Sense and Sensibility) and Tom Hanks is just delightful as Walt Disney.

All right. To wrap up this tres lengthy review, I'll say this. I fully admit that my response to this movie is about 90% some combination of love for the actual Mary Poppins movie and love for Thompson as Travers, but be that as it may, it really, really worked for me, and it easily enters onto the list of my favorite movies from 2013.

4.5 stars.

Flickchart: #277 out of 2082, below The Sunshine Boys (1975) and above Another Woman.

Rent digitally on Amazon.