"Saving Mr. Banks" (2013)

The image Disney projects as a company is sold primarily through its films, and if we take those as any measure of what the company wishes us to believe than they are the cheeriest, merriest, most whimsical do-gooders the world-over. But that's simply not true. The company has a darker side and one it's all too keen to sweep under the rug. Saving Mr. Banks, a film about Walt's efforts to obtain the rights to P.L. Traver's Mary Poppins, re-writes some of the historical truth in its story. Travers was never completely won over by the charm and grace of Disney, and she ultimately gave up the rights do to being strong-armed by Disney and also desperately requiring money.

Saving Mr. Banks sugarcoats this history. It turns Disney into a sage old fella who loves Travers property, wants to do right by it, and also wishes to help her come to terms with her past. The capitalist interests in Travers' book largely play out in the background.

Though marketing has attempted to sell the film as a battle of wills between Travers (Emma Thompson) and Disney (Tom Hanks), the film is less about their relationship than it is Travers being haunted by the personal history that informed the book. Much of the film focuses on flashbacks to Travers troubled childhood where her free-wheeling father (Colin Farrell) turns life into a series of imaginative tall-tales to cover up an awful reality of financial insecurity and domestic strife. The film makes a series of one-to-one pop-Freudian psychological suggestions as to why Travers is the stubborn, prickly individual she is and why the story of Mary Poppins matters so deeply to her.

Though some of this feels under-baked and woefully sentimental, the film is ably supported by some strong performances, particularly Thompson. Travers is purposely a hard character to like but Thompson earns our sympathy, turning her self-righteous wisecracking into a cynic's weary defense. And there may be no one better suited to play the Disney of myth than the charming every man of Hanks. Notable among supporting roles is a pleasingly upbeat Paul Giammati as a unfailingly hopeful limo driver who drives Travers around and slowly garners her trust. Annie Rose Buckley gives one of the best performances by a child actor in a while as the young Travers, wonderfully conveying the unblinkering rose-colored idealization of a child and the earnest confusion of someone witnessing things beyond her years.

Saving Mr. Banks plays its hand far too neatly with its conscious PR-efforts. But it's still a pleasant film -- in a way Disney movies irresistibly, sometimes cloyingly, are -- though perhaps too pleasant considering some of its darker moments it too often attempts to soften. The film breezes by with the cheer that a spoonful of sugar offers. But then again that sugar comes with some bitter medicine the film wishes for us to ignore.

Grade: ★★