By: Elise Meyer

Elise Meyer — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 23:15:52 +0000

Wow, Ian, we couldn’t have more divergent opinions on your last 2 reviews (and the last 2 films I’ve seen). I LOVED Saving Mr. Banks, and hated hated hated the interminable and obnoxious “Wolf”. I am so sorry that you never saw Mary Poppins when you were young and could (would) have been charmed by it, but that ship has sailed, and there is no way you would enjoy any part of it today (or would almost anyone who didn’t see it in the 60s, when the effects would have seemed less cheesy, the pace less glacial, the characters less unfamiliar, the culture less stiltedly mannered). But for me, a huge fan of the Mary Poppins books as well as the film, to see the parallels between the writer’s life and her art, and her attempt to maintain artistic control over her book- so intensely personal and traumatic; transferred to a medium so removed from her introspective personality was absolutely fascinating. For Travers, as the film depicts, Mary Poppins was her coping mechanism, her unique way to re-direct and come to terms with her horrible childhood. I loved picking up on the biographical minutiae hidden in her book. I loved the way Disney/Hanks charmed, guided and collaborated with her so that in the end, he helped heal-actually resolve– her childhood wounds, by actually re-framing the father figure as the “child” that needed “the nanny”. On the other hand, while I applaud DeCaprio’s over-the-top performance, the movie was repellent in every way, and especially indulgent in the ridiculously long running time and totally unnecessarily repetitive attenuation of disgusting excess and debauchery. (And, anyway, nobody in the history of drugs ever downed that many quaaludes at once! )

Comments on: Movie Review: Saving Mr. Banks

By: Elise Meyer