Saving Mr. Banks (John Lee Hancock, 2013)
Damn straight, I got verklempt towards the end of this falsified account of the run-in between P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson, cartoon-hating but cartoonish up to her Aqua-Netted coif) and Walt Disney (Tom Hanks, who else?) over transforming Travers' Mary Poppins book series into the celebrated 1964 film. I'm not a robot or a zombie although HAL and the walking dead in Joe Dante's Homecoming evince more human feeling than anything in this sorry slab of PR.
Why does Disney have to lie? We know that Travers resented many aspects of the Mary Poppins film and forbade any subsequent Disney adaptations of her work. But this reality isn't all that cretinous or surprising. Who would be stunned to learn that Walt Disney was a rabid capitalist? More importantly, would Disney stock plummet due to a portrait of his ruthlessness in getting exactly what he wants? Hell, I imagine the core audience for this film would applaud *any* of his attempts to get Mary Poppins on film.
But lo - we're served ever more pablum ooze in Saving Mr. Banks with a tearful Travers succumbing to The Magic of Disney at Mary Poppins' premiere and Walt as an anthropomorphic Ideological State Apparatus sitting directly behind blowing pixie-dust platitudes into her ear. Bags and bags of sugar but not a drop of medicine in the 310.
Also, 125 minutes? Nuh-uh. No, ma'am.
Finally, can we have a permanent moratorium on tiles of the Present Participle + Character variety, especially since another Tom Hanks vehicle already used Saving?
Grade: B-minus
Why does Disney have to lie? We know that Travers resented many aspects of the Mary Poppins film and forbade any subsequent Disney adaptations of her work. But this reality isn't all that cretinous or surprising. Who would be stunned to learn that Walt Disney was a rabid capitalist? More importantly, would Disney stock plummet due to a portrait of his ruthlessness in getting exactly what he wants? Hell, I imagine the core audience for this film would applaud *any* of his attempts to get Mary Poppins on film.
But lo - we're served ever more pablum ooze in Saving Mr. Banks with a tearful Travers succumbing to The Magic of Disney at Mary Poppins' premiere and Walt as an anthropomorphic Ideological State Apparatus sitting directly behind blowing pixie-dust platitudes into her ear. Bags and bags of sugar but not a drop of medicine in the 310.
Also, 125 minutes? Nuh-uh. No, ma'am.
Finally, can we have a permanent moratorium on tiles of the Present Participle + Character variety, especially since another Tom Hanks vehicle already used Saving?
Grade: B-minus
Labels: bad movies, Disney, Hollywood
posted by Kevin John at 9:35 AM
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