I went to see Saving Mr. Banks – the movie that tells the story of the making of Mary Poppins – or specifically the struggle to get the author of the books (which I didn’t realize existed until I saw the trailer to this movie) to sign the rights to make the movie to Walt Disney (personally).

Tom Hanks plays Disney perfectly – in my book, this is a much better (and more subtle) performance than what he did in Captain Phillips (there’s a single moment where the Poppins author calls Disney’s life’s work silly and childish and you can see just this moment of pain cross his face that he has to hide quickly in order to continue his sales pitch… pure acting gold).

Emma Thompson is P.L. Travers – the unimaginative, fun-hating old stick-in-the-mud meanie who wrote Mary Poppins (she doesn’t want musical numbers, animation, mustaches, the color red, romance, fun, or Dick Van Dyke)… she’s really unlikable to the point that I don’t want to read the book if it’s as humorless and curmudgeonly as she is… but also curious to see how the movie was changed and if her prose is equally as magical and imaginative and fun as she isn’t (it must be or people wouldn’t have loved it…I’d hope).

One thing I should warn folks about is that it’s not really a kid-friendly movie despite the Disney and Mary Poppins trappings… the development and production stuff would be boring and there’s a lot of flashbacks starring a very drunken Collin Ferrell – a lot of dark, depressing, and sad stuff. Very well done and Ferrell knocks it out of the park… but still pretty somber.

Most of the stuff set in the 1960s is more fun and light though (especially a particular song rehearsal for the Go Fly a Kite tune – had a big grin on that).

Overall, a good movie that’s worth seeing if you at all like Disney, film history, Mary Poppins, Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, and movie making in general.

Score: 84