Hailed as the next big thing, with lead actors already poised for the actors, Saving Mr Banks is indeed a force to be reckoned with. Telling the story behind one of the favourite Disney movies of all times, the story takes us to 1961 London, where author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) is bullied by her agent into flying to Los Angeles to meet with Walt Disney (Tom Hanks), the man desperate to adapt her Mary Poppins books into a film for the past twenty years.

At the same time, the movie also tells the back story of P.L. Travers, who grew up in Australia. With an alcoholic yet strangely endearing father (Colin Firth), and a mother (Ruth Wilson) desperate to lead a normal life, little Ginty (Annie Rose Buckley) as she’s affectionately called lives every day like an adventure, but are things really that easy?

For two week, Walt and his committed team try to pull out all the stops in order to prove to the reticent author that her books can take on a life of their own on the big screen. But Travers was a hard woman (in real life even more so than on screen) and often drove the Disney staff to the brink of sanity. Feeling a special antipathy towards everything cartoonish, as well as an almost religious love to the English language, Travers is against half the cast, any animation and refuses for the movie to be a musical.

Songwriters Robert (B.J. Novak) and Richard (Jason Schwartzman) Sherman find it increasingly hard to work with such a difficult person, especially in light of their excellent musical numbers like ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’.

The movie will make you laugh, sigh in despair and frustration, and of course, it’ll make you shed a tear or two. The acting is beyond excellent, with Tom Hanks playing a truly believable Walt Disney. And if you are, like me, a Disney fan, you will weep with jealousy as P.L. Travers is showered in Disney merchandise and even receives a guided tour of the original Disneyland from Walt himself.

All in all, a movie to see with young and old, friends and lovers.

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Pictures from: aceshowbiz.com, cdnds.net, imdb.com