Orlando Lens
Saving Mr. Banks is the kind of late-in-the-year quality studio-funded entertainment offering that is built in order to capture an audience that doesn't tend to come out to the cinema for the summer superhero action epics. "Middlebrow" is a term that is often used derisively, but it's not my intention to insult Saving Mr. Banks or films like it with that term. Some of the greatest and most successful American filmmakers make squarely middlebrow films; Steven Spielberg is of course the patron saint of the middlebrow. Films under this heading are well-budgeted, feature recognizable and well-regarded actors, and are easily digestible due to a their aiming at basic, relateable human emotions to anchor any events within the movie, fantastic or not. Above all, middlebrow films tend to be "clean." They do not have a lot of ambiguity in terms of heroes and villains, and the character arcs follow predictable and satisfying paths. When done poorly, middlebrow can become unwatchable melodrama, as in the lesser works of Ron Howard. When done correctly, middlebrow reminds us of "classic" Hollywood, telling satisfying stories with a degree of clarity and craft that is certainly laudable. Saving Mr. Banks is middlebrow done right.
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The film follows the process through which author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) finally relinquishes the rights to her Mary Poppins books to Walt Disney (Tom Hanks). It is no spoiler to say she does so. The film wisely assumes that the audience knows that Mary Poppins is a film that was made (and made well), and the journey of Saving Mr. Banks is not strictly will-she-or-won't-she-let-the-make-the-movie. Instead, by using flashbacks to Travers' youth as the daughter of an alcoholic but loving banker in Australia, the film tries to decode what the Mary Poppins characters mean to Travers and why she is so particular in how those characters will be depicted. The title, of course, gives away the "heart" of Mary Poppins. Saving Mr. Banks is not a movie that trades in secrets or surprises. Nor does it provide any true visual grandeur (though some of the Australian vistas are somewhat spectacular, if only for a moment). Rather, the film relies on the quality and goodwill engendered by its stellar ensemble cast. In addition to the main roles played by Thompson and Hanks, there are wonderful turns by Paul Giamatti as a chipper limo driver, Colin Farrell as Travers' father, as well as B.J. Novak, Bradley Whitford, Jason Schwartzman, and Kathy Baker. All are very, very good and manage to produce a very, very good, but not great, film.
Saving Mr. Banks opens today at most local multiplexes. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including some unsettling images. Run time 2 hours 5 minutes.
By Nicholas Ware
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The film fails to be great largely because it fails to present the true history of its characters. Being a Disney movie about Disney, Walt Disney is presented here as a warm-hearted saint of a man who is also an extremely shrewd businessman. He manages to be a dream in both liberal and conservative terms with his devotion to the imagination of children and the bottom line. This, of course, is an incomplete portrait of a man whose failings (antisemitism, a bordering-on-strange obsession with futurism) are well-documented. Travers is a lesser-known figure but is similarly whitewashed. Thompson's Travers is a desexualized loner. In reality, P.L. Travers was known to be bisexual and if not promiscuous then at the very least experienced. Granted, she was known to be the hardass she is pictured to be in Saving Mr. Banks, but she was thought to be a compelling hardass, and the film makes her less of a whirling dervish and more an obstinate woman with Daddy issues. Certainly a film that aimed a little higher could have done much more with a woman with such a rich history.
However, those very fair criticisms don't make Saving Mr. Banks bad, it just prevents the film from being great. Rather, perhaps, the films ambitions might themselves do that. Saving Mr. Banks is the ultimate holiday film for an audience of adult-aged families; while kids will get nothing from it, young adults all the way to the elderly will certainly enjoy the small if massively incomplete look behind the curtain of not just the filmmaking process, but the process by which an artist gives up the rights to her own work and an entertainment baron puts his stamp on an acquired property. Saving Mr. Banks is not great, but it's a great compromise of a film for a wide variety of audience segments and can be heartily recommended to anyone who reads this review.
Saving Mr. Banks opens today at most local multiplexes. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including some unsettling images. Run time 2 hours 5 minutes.