Sometimes, the cycle of a film's reception seems to run from praise to backlash and back again even before the movie is released. Such is the fate of Saving Mr. Banks, a charmer of a movie that is also a surprisingly well constructed story about Walt Disney's pursuit for the rights to adapt Mary Poppins from her skeptical author, P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson). Unsurprisingly, most of the pushback stems from the rapacious corporatism many accuse the Disney company of in general and its need to buff up their founder's image to get more specific. I point you to a video by author and occasional movie critic Harlan Ellison for that take on the film, because no one can express it quite as well as he does and because I don't necessarily disagree. Let's just say that yes, Saving Mr. Banks is as much a fairy tale as Disney's animated product tends to be. But I still found it to be a moving film worth visiting and revisiting in the future.
