Saving Mr. Banks
Director: John Lee Hancock
Writers: Kelly Marcel, Sue Smith
Cast: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, Bradley Whitford, Colin Farrell, B.J. Novak
Walt Disney Pictures
Rated PG-13 | 125 Minutes
Release Date: December 20, 2013

Directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side), Saving Mr. Banks centers on the life of Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), shifting between 1907 with her childhood in Queensland, Australia, the 1961 negotiations with Walt Disney (Tom Hanks), and the subsequent making of Mary Poppins.

While in California for filming, Travers has flashbacks to her difficult childhood in Australia with her sweet but self-destructive father (Colin Farrell), the inspiration for her story’s patriarch, Mr. Banks.

Some film critics, like the immortal Leonard Maltin, have called Saving Mr. Banks “a charming and heartwarming piece of entertainment, highlighted by a handful of superior performances.” I, on the other hand, would call it a nauseating, sentimental piece of corporate propaganda about an anti-Semite and a very British – and very bitchy – author who may or may not be a crazy person.