Plot
Reclusive author Mrs. P. L Travers (Emma Thompson) has spent the last twenty years fighting the advances of Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) and his company in face of their ceaseless hunt for the movie rights to Travers masterpiece Mary Poppins. However, with mounting money problems, she concedes to travel to L.A. and oversee the creation of the film, holding the rights to hostage. But with her past and fears haunting her, will they ever come to an agreement?
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| The marriage proposal caught everyone by surprise. |
Review
We’re now officially in awards’ season, the time of year where the prestige-baiting big-hitters slug it out in the world’s most loquacious royal rumble. Expect plenty of thesping, plentiful drama and maybe a laugh or three.
Saving Mr. Banks is the perfect season introduction.
Every person and their dog knows Mary Poppins. And they probably all have a favourite song that they like to hum to when they think no one’s listening. But knowing how the film ends in absolutely no way diminishes the charming majesty of Saving Mr. Banks.
Banks is in more ways than one this year’s Silver Linings Playbook, a film that lives, dies and breathes on the strength of central duo (and quality supporting pack).
The marketing for Banks may emphasise Walt Disney’s role – hell, some had it pegged down as a biopic – but Hanks is firmly the supporting force here. Banks is all about the dowdy Mrs. Travers and the imperious Emma Thomson, make no mistake.
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| He just wouldn't stop poking strangers. |
Thompson is a marvel. She’s like all of the worst ‘old-people’ qualities rolled up into one acerbic, biting, relentlessly sarcastic beast armed with a private arsenal of cutting put-downs. She’s impossible to please, immune to garish American charms – ‘it’s Mrs. Travers’ – and is the general embodiment of the prim & proper British sensibility that so distances us from our Stateside cousins. Or at least did once upon a time.
On paper she sounds like your prototypical, bitchy ‘lady-of-a-certain-age.’ But in Thompson’s hands she’s absolutely brilliant, as laugh-out-loud hilarious as she is dramatically engaging. A nuanced, charming masterful performance.
But Bankswould be nothing if Thompson had no one to play against, and Hanks knocks it out of the park (to borrow an appropriately Yankee phrase). Walt Disney was a famously complicated man – part showman, part businessman, part family-man (he never breaks a promise to his daughters, don’t cha know?) – and a detailed investigation would likely a require a far different tone than the general milky warmth offered by Banks. However, despite production wrangling by The House of Mouse itself, Walt’s portrayal refrains from running all candypops and butterflies into ‘holy Messiah’ territory.
And it’s all thanks to classy Hanks. He oozes a sense of magnificence, helmed in by an endearing dose of good-natured humanity that Hanks has perfected over his illustrious career. Imagine Forrest Gump by way of Captain Phillips’ Richard Phillips and you’re kind of there. Kind of.
Banks is, bottom line, the depiction of warfare, that old ‘unstoppable force meets an immovable object’ thing, albeit on a very personal scale. And Hanks is flawless in the portrayal of a man who’s so used to everything proceeding exactly as planned suddenly being faced with the proverbial spanner in the works. Even if said spanner is fond of tight perms and floral dresses. He always has the end game in sight – ‘Mary Poppins’ all up in lights – but is classy, surprising and most importantly fun in his hunt.
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| Banks teaches us that Australia is exactly like England, just more burnt. |
Together Hanks and Thomson deliver a fantastic script with flawless skill and almost single-handedly create a film that’s as funny as it is nuanced, poignant and human. It may be over-eager on the sentimentality, and everything may end ‘happily ever after’ (this is a Disney film after all!), but it’s delightfully, deftly pitched.
It’s a shame then that Banks seems so doggedly focused on breaking up that Thompson-Hanks focus through copious flashbacking. Traver’s origins story is obviously important (integrally so, as you soon find out; just who is ‘Mr. Banks’?) and the flashbacks, focusing on her father (Colin Farrell is pouncing English dandy dreamboat mode) and the genesis of Mary herself, despite initially seeming a tad too saccharine and too, well, Disney, arc naturally into crushing drama. However, like clauses in the previous sentence, there are simply too many of them. And many, particularly as we approach the conclusion, are simply unnecessary. The hurt and heartbreak that so clearly and painfully haunts Travers is movingly evident through Thompson’s performance by itself, nothing else is needed. And indeed anything else just gets in the way.
However, it doesn’t harm the undeniable charm of Saving Mr. Banks. Deserved kudos to the supporting cast too, with Paul Giamatti as dopey do-gooder driver Ralph and B. J Novak and Jason Schwartzman as the musical Sherman brothers, who help to bring the film to life. The musical scenes in particular can vary from the grin-inducing rendition of ‘Let’s Go Fly a Kite’ to the emotional gutpunch of the banker sequence, illustrating how flashbacks can and should be used.
Do yourself a favour, and go see it (and wait through the credits!).
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| Travers meets the Invisible Man, Mary Poppins' uncredited stuntman. |
Verdict
Saving Mr. Banks is a perfect seasonal film, both ‘Christmas’ and ‘awards’. It’s charming but never schmaltzy, funny but never stupid, dramatic without the melodrama. Heartily recommended.
4/5
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