The weird enshrinement of Walt Disney and Mary Poppins: Saving Mr. Banks

Just as you should read and study The Odyssey, preferably in the original Greek, before setting off on a reading of Ulysses, you should probably see and ponder Mary Poppins before you set out to see the new Disney movie Saving Mr. Banks. No, stop it - I'm just joking! But you might think, from the hagiographic tone of this film, that Mary Poppins is one of the great cultural monuments of our time. In essence, the movie is about Disney's 20-year quest to get Aussie-British author V.L. Travers to assign his company the rights to her books; as the movie opens, she's about to sign the contract, which gives her the right of final script approval - her agent says this is a first for Disney, and it's very unusual in any event. The very best scenes in the movie involve (some of) her meetings with the writer, composer, and lyricist team to go over some of the scenes, the art direction, etc. Travers, played very well by Emma Thompson, who adds value to any movie she's in even this one, is really funny in some of her bizarre critiques - insisting that film not include the color red, for example - and we learn from the closing credits that these working sessions were in fact recorded and the best scenes it seems are very closely based on fact. And that's where the movie goes off base; I would have enjoyed seeing a realistic account of how this team managed to put the project together even w/ her literally insane demands - but no, this is a Disney film, after all, so over time we see the writing sessions become increasingly Glee - choreographed, background score, and so on - why not just play it w/ the single studio piano? And we see Travers/Thompson become less irascible and increasingly relaxed, cool, eccentrically lovable. In other words - this film has a Hollywood, a Disney, ending. There are two other aspects to this film, neither of them good. Though Tom Hanks plays a credible Disney, it's totally bizarre to see him plead with Travers for the rights to this film - it will bring joy to children, and adults, everywhere, he says; he promised his daughter he would make this film, and a man doesn't break a promise to his children; and so on. It's impossible to know whether Disney is meant to be seen as such a cornball, or whether he's being a shrewd businessman. I suspect he was a shark - but I also suspect, for some weird reason, that this movie is meant to enshrine him as an affable genius. The less said about the many flashbacks to Travers's difficult Australian childhood the better, but let's just say I found the youthful T. and her eccentric but fatally flawed father insufferable, almost nauseating. Paul Giamatti, btw, is wasted in a dumb part as a limo driver who at one point literally sits on the ground digging holes w/ Travers as he talks about his "handicapped" daughter. (Later, in lieu of a tip, she gives him a list of famous people who had disabilities.) Travers may have wanted to ban the color red from her film, but it seems the studio wanted to ban the color black from this one. It's the most lily white casting I've seen in any movie in many years - right down to the extras. In a very long sequence at Disneyland with many crowd scenes, I saw not a single person of color. In fact, the only black person I can recall in the entire movie is the man who lifted the luggage from Travers's limo. Happiest place on earth indeed.