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Saturday, January 18, 2014

Saving Mr. Banks

I saw Saving Mr. Banks on the first day of Christmas vacation with three good friends. There were so many reasons I wanted to see it. To learn the background behind the best live-action Disney movie ever made. To see a surefire Best Picture nominee (grr). To see Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. To see a movie partially filmed in Disneyland. To see BJ NOVAK AND JASON SCHWARTZMAN PORTRAY THE SHERMAN BROTHERS. Yeah there were a lot reasons. All of these culminated to meet my expectations. Everything I didn't know was coming? Easily exceeded them. Spoilers ahead!

While being "defined" as a "feel-good movie," Saving Mr. Banks wasn't just that. There were actually some pretty dark scenes, while there were uplifting scenes as well. Paul Giamatti and Colin Farrell were in the perfect roles and they played them perfectly. Tom Hanks tackled the incredibly tough task of playing Walt Disney and Emma Thompson was nothing less than perfection as PL Travers. The acting, costume design, and all scenes were all perfect. So was the awesome soundtrack that combined classic Mary Poppins songs with new Mr. Banks songs.

I loved every part of this movie, as I expected to, but I especially loved BJ and Jason. I love the Sherman Brothers and I love those two actors. It was everything I could have wanted. Another admirable portion of the film was how the producers tried to keep the ending as real as they could while keeping with the movie's tone. Yes, Travers, in real life, hated everything about Mary Poppins, the film, and refused to let anything ever be made from it again. The Sherman Brothers said they hated her until the day she died. Both of these were not addressed, but in the ending of the film, it was definitely visible that Travers didn't quite care for how the movie turned out. Thank you for the touch of realism.

My two favorite scenes were incredibly dramatic, moving scenes. One, between Richard Sherman and Walt Disney when they thought all was lost. Sherman played Feed the Birds and Disney talked about what, not only Poppins, but what Disney, as a company, mean to him. Bob Sherman was laying on the couch, asleep.

The other was when Walt flew to London for a Hail Mary attempt at convincing Travers to make the Mary Poppins movie. He tells her about his childhood and what he knows about her's. It's really amazing.

Fantastic film. Everything I wanted and more.

"Winds in the east. Mist coming in. Like something is brewing. About to begin."

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