Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, left, and Emma Thompson as author P.L. Travers.
The words old-fashioned, sentimental and charming come to mind when watching Saving Mr. Banks - in a good way. These are, after all, the qualities you'd expect from a Disney film about the making of a Disney film, and starring Tom Hanks.
Saving Mr. Banks tells the story of Walt
Disney's 20-year quest to secure the rights to produce a film of P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins novels. Disney (Hanks) is determined to make the film, and deliver on a promise he made to his daughters. P. L Travers (Thompson) is equally resolute that her creation will never be given the Hollywood treatment.
But in 1961, financial pressures force the prim and proper Australian-born Englishwoman to hear what Disney has in mind. She is assured that she'll have approval of the script and there will be no animation in the film, but is mortified to learn the movie will be filled with musical numbers.
She spends two weeks with the film's screenwriter and songwriters, and in prickly discussions with Disney as they try to agree on, well, anything. Travers doesn't like the proposed art direction, costumes, choice of actors and rewrites the screenplay line by line.
Her reluctance to let go of Mary Poppins makes her more and more unreasonable by the day - to the point where she announces there will be no colour red in the film. It's all highly amusing and based on actual recordings Travers insisted were taken each day.
