TheRetroCritic

There's biopics and then there's sort-of-biopics which don't exactly go through a person's entire life's work but which instead focus on one specific, iconic event. Think Capote , Hitchcock or, more recently, Saving Mr. Banks : a look at how Walt Disney obtained the rights to Mary Poppins from the story's writer P. L. Travers. This one isn't even really a making-of movie as we see none of the filming for Mary Poppins or (wisely) meet any weird Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke lookalikes. Saving Mr. Banks limits itself to a few recording sessions with Travers (Emma Thompson) and The Sherman Brothers, who came up with all of the film's catchy songs, intercut with flashbacks depicting some of the writer's early life and conversations she had with Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) as well as Paul Giamatti's chatty driver. Finding out why Travers resisted Disney's offers to buy the movie rights to Poppins for so long and why Disney was this insistent