I was unaware of the story behind the Disney movie, Mary Poppins. Walt Disney had been trying to get the rights to make the movie for 20 years. It was only when the author of the Mary Poppins series, P.L. Travers (played wonderfully by Emma Thompson), finds herself in financial difficulties that the sale of the rights to Mary Poppins becomes a possibility. P. L. Travers is a bitter woman, difficult in all respects. Walt Disney (played convincingly by Tom Hanks) and his staff cater to Travers’ moods and whims. But a mystery remains. Using a series of flashbacks, we discover why P. L. Travers was transformed from a dreamy child to a cantankerous adult. GRADE: A
I’m looking forward to this one.
I wonder how much is fact, how much fiction? It’s a film we’d like to see.
Beth, you’ll enjoy SAVING MR. BANKS!
Read Harlan Ellison’s take on this.
Rick, SAVING MR. BANKS is based on Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers by Valerie Lawson.
Bob, are you referring to Ellison saying: “This film is a refurbishing of Walt Disney’s godlike image, which he spent his entire life creating. and it is so f*cking manipulative,” Ellison says. “There is a scene near the end that is pivotal to this movie…the movie could not exist without this scene. Never happened. Bogus. Made up. The Walt Disney company made up the scene…It’s bullshit. The movie is bullshit from one end to the other.”
Ellison in full Troll mode. His opinion is his, fine, but when he decides to use his fame as a platform for flinging out that many f-words, I turn off.
Or B-words, I guess.
Rick, SAVING MR. BANKS is a movie, not a documentary. It’s based on a biography, but it’s designed to entertain…which it does.