Film Review – Saving Mr. Banks

“Saving Mr. Banks” tells the story of how the 1964 smash “Mary Poppins” came to be, weathering a difficult creative process that featured intense disagreements between author P.L. Travers and Walt Disney. Although it may seem like a joyous picture about the birth of a classic, “Saving Mr. Banks” is unexpectedly dark, prone to belaboring its mournful elements as if to apologize for its lighter side. Masterful performances carry the effort, and observance of the screenwriting process is fascinating, but here’s a movie that seems far too bland to truly explore the diseases that haunted Travers for the duration of her life, leaving director John Lee Hancock powerless to manufacture the tearjerker the screenplay is aching to become. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com