By Noel Smith
Take one of the world’s most creative men and one of the world’s most exasperating women, put them together, and you have the makings of an interesting and entertaining movie.
Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers, the eccentric author of the Mary Poppins books, and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney at the height of his career as the engine of the Disney Empire, are put together in a very entertaining story of a clash of wills as they try to bring Travers’ creation of Mary Poppins to the screen.
At the same time, this is a cautionary tale about how adults affect the lives of their children. Travers was born and raised in Australia at the very end of the 19th century. Her father (Colin Farrell) is a dreamer and a drunk while her mother (Ruth Wilson) is caught in a life she doesn’t want and can’t cope with. Flashbacks occur throughout the movie tying Traver’s adult attitudes and struggles to her traumatic childhood (played by Annie Rose Buckley). These flashbacks are seamless in taking the viewer between the two very different worlds and times while keeping the context understandable.
Having read the Mary Poppins books as a child long before the movie, I believe Emma Thompson’s expressions and actions as Travers are spot-on that of the pre-Hollywood version of the magical nanny. The original Mary Poppins was an extremely severe character that somehow brings the Banks children into a magical world where anything could happen. She was often forbidding and scary, anything but a sweet or understanding companion for children.
So there we are, a haunted and difficult author pitted against the high-energy creator of movie magic. Happy songs, dancing and animation were an anathema to the author, Travers, who has the power to pull the plug on the whole project by not signing the rights to make the movie.
The movie in a nutshell is about how the author, Travers, came to create her most famous and magical character; how the consummate imagineer, Disney, saw that character, Mary Poppins, and surrounded her with his own brand of magic. Obviously, the movie was made but it took a glimpse into Disney’s own difficult childhood to make it come to pass.
Don’t miss Saving Mr. Banks; there is Oscar magic to be found in this movie.