Disney sends Travers to Hollywood, to work on the story, screenplay, and songs with writer Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) and talented composers Robert and Richard Sherman (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman). Travers also begins to bond with her cheerful limo driver Ralph (Paul Giamatti).
Yet Travers remains suspicious of Disney, Hollywood, and Americans. When she learns that the movie will include animated sequences, she returns to England in a huff, obliging Disney to fly to London to lobby for her signature on the film contract.
Scenes set during the early 1960s are occasionally interspersed with flashback scenes to Travers as a child of about ten, nicknamed Ginty (Annie Rose Buckley) by her adored but ill-fated father (Colin Farrell). He is married to pretty but humorless Margaret (Ruth Wilson). Ginty has a younger sister, Biddy (Lily Bigham). While their alcoholic father suffers from tuberculosis, Margaret's stern sister Aunt Ellie (Rachel Griffiths) pays a visit.
How others will see it. Saving Mr. Banks was generally well received by critics. It did best at BAFTA, accumulating five award nominations, including Best British Film and Best Actress (Thompson). The movie was a box office success, considering its budget and story, and the age of its leads.
At imdb.com, the user vote total is a respectable 100K, and the user ratings are fairly high at 7.5. A gender spread is palpable, 7.4 from men versus 7.8 from women. Presumably, men identify with the distressed chain smoker Walt Disney, while women side with the difficult yet polite Mrs. Travers. The casting of familiar fan favorites Hanks and Thompson considerably aids the movie's marketability.
How I felt about it. With any film from the True Story genre, the first question is, how historically accurate is it? And how credible are the departures from truth under the guise of artistic license?
Actually, the film is fairly accurate. Walt Disney was a heavy smoker who tried to conceal his habit. He did deliver newspapers as a child, twice a day, although he was ten years old instead of eight. Travers' father did die of tuberculous when she was eight.
The film misleads in that Walt Disney secured the film rights to the Mary Poppins books before Travers' stint in California. However, she had final script approval, which of course did not prevent Disney from imposing the animated sequences that Travers despised.
The movie ends fairly upbeat, with Travers deeply moved by seeing the film at the premier. This is strictly fictional. Travers did write "Mary Poppins in the Kitchen", but years later, published in 1975.
Travers lived to be 97, long enough to sanction a musical play based on her books. She insisted that the writers be British. She never approved a sequel to the Disney film, going so far as to include the prohibition in her will.
The character of lovable limo driver Ralph is strictly a cinematic creation. It is doubtful that Travers danced to "Let's Go Fly a Kite" with Disney executives, or enjoyed a merry-go-round ride with Walt Disney. Walt Disney never flew to England to win over Travers.
In the flashback scenes, young Travers prevents her mother from suicide by drowning. This is undoubtedly false. Her father wore a large mustache, removed for the movie to make him more attractive to modern audiences. Young Travers wears dresses and has a permed hairstyle inappropriate for a small pre-World War Australian farm. Her looks and behavior are intended to make her as sympathetic as possible. Weren't children ever brats back then?
Probably the most egregious historical error in the movie implies that Mary Poppins was based on her mother's sister instead of her great aunt. The reason for this is likely that the movie version of Mary Poppins was played by young, beautiful, and slender Julie Andrews instead of the older, heavyset, and pompous character found in the source childrens' books.
Nonetheless, Saving Mr. Banks is relatively accurate by Hollywood biopic standards. The casting is nothing is not pleasant: Hanks is always likable, and so is Emma Thompson, despite her obligation to play a prickly fussbudget. As someone whose earliest memories involve Disney records of Sherman Brothers songs, it is engaging to see their screen personifications.
The film, then, is watchable and moderately interesting, although seldom more than workmanlike in its execution.