Saving Mr. Banks

DRAMA

Critical Characters

8.0 out of 10 | Movie or Rental

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Rated: PG-13  Thematic elements including some unsettling images
Release Date: December 13, 2013
Runtime: 2 hours 5 minutes

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Director: John Lee Hancock
Writers: Kelly Marcel, Sue Smith
Cast: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Annie Rose Buckley, Colin Farrell, Paul Giamatti, Bradley Whitford, B.J. Novak, Jason Schwartzman

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SYNOPSIS:  Author P. L. Travers reflects on her difficult childhood while meeting with filmmaker Walt Disney during production for the adaptation of her novel, Mary Poppins.

REVIEW: The Blind Side writer/director John Lee Hancock flies in with a talking umbrella to uncover how Mary Poppins finally came to the big screen. Written by Sue Smith and Kelly Marcel, and based on actual recordings kept by Walt Disney Studios, this mouse's tale tells more than just how Mary Poppins came to life.

P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson, Beautiful Creatures), writer of the Mary Poppins stories, has been pursued by Walt Disney (Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips) for 20 years to adapt her beloved characters to the big screen. When she finds herself struggling to maintain her finances, Mrs. Travers travels to California to the Walt Disney production complex to meet with Walt and a team of writers and composers to see if Walt will be faithful to her work and the vision of her characters. She doesn't sign her rights to her characters away, doesn't want sappy and snappy music, and forbids - above all else - any use of animation. Every swatch of cloth, every choice of a cast, every nuance of the story plot is a battle between Mrs. Travers and Walt's creative team. Can either side compromise enough to create a finished film?

We all know that Walt Disney Studios produced and put out Mary Poppins as a feature film. That could never come under dispute. What this film shows is the turmoil, both internal and external, that Mrs. Travers underwent while trying to rationalize why and how to bring her beloved nanny to the big screen. The film is aptly named, the P.L.Travers collection of Mary Poppins stories a reflection of her own youth spent at the end of the line in Australia. She idolized her father who held a strong grip on his own imaginative spirit. She idolized him as she was a kindred Celtic spirit. Writing Mary Poppins allowed Travers to pay homage to her father and to attempt to reconcile her own demons concerning family.

The story flashes between Pamela's youth in Australia around 1901, then moving forward to 1960s London, England and Hollywood, California for a fateful few weeks where the battle for Mary Poppins' future commenced. Moving back-and-forth, we catch glimpses of what P.L.Travers has been dealing with her entire life. What starts off as an author's catharsis by putting finger to typewriter ends up being a much larger realization when she is faced with the decision of letting go of her creations.

Emma Thompson is superb as the P.L. Travers. She is prim and proper, holding her values and creations in the highest regard. She is difficult to deal with and more difficult to read. Tom Hanks, as Walt Disney himself, plays the man behind the Mouse with ease and a childlike enthusiasm. He also holds his own values in high regard, as well trying to keep a 20 year promise to his daughters. Paul Giamatti (Turbo) plays Travers' chauffeur Ralph, bringing his own positive attitude to the aid of a difficult woman and situation. B.J. Novak as Robert Sherman and Jason Schwartzman as his composer brother Richard are both very professional when it comes to being the creative force to put Mary Poppins on screen. Both over-the-top and subtle, each gets their points across to the Mary Poppins creator. Colin Farrell who plays Pamela's father and Annie Rose Buckley who plays his young creative daughter have a chemistry matching their creative and imaginative spirits.

Semi-biographical, semi historical, and pulling source material from both archived recordings from the Disney creative team meetings and sketches and movie sequences from the Disney Vault, Saving Mr. Banks has an air of realism mixed with whimsy. As with all stories of this kind there is always embellishment and license, but this feels just right. As Mary Poppins herself would say to the author and her need for closure and letting go, a spoonful of sugar will make the medicine go down.

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Disney Pixar Brave

Tempting Fate

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Rated: PG  Brief rude behavior and intense images
Release Date: June 22, 2012
Runtime:  1 hour 40 minutes

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Director: Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, Steve Purcell
Writers: Mark Andrews, Steve Prucell, Brenda Chapman, Irene Mecchi
Cast:  Emma Thompson, Kelly MacDonald, Kevin McKidd, Robbie Coltrane, Billy Connolly, Craig Ferguson, Julie Walters

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SYNOPSIS: Young princess Merida discovers that she is to be wed as part of tradition to continue the truces between the clan. Thinking the arrangement unfair, Merida comes across an old witch who will give her a magical charm that will change her fate.

REVIEW: Disney Pixar is known for its tremendous work in kid-friendly and adult-entertaining computer generated animations. From Toy Story to Up, Pixar Animation Studios has never disappointed. This time around, for the studio's latest animation, writers/directors Mark Andrews (One Man Band), Brenda Chapman (The Prince of Egypt), and Steve Purcell (Sam and Max), along with additional writer Irene Mecchi (The Lion King), look to add to the long line of classic animated films.

In the 10th century Scottish highlands, princess Merida (Kelly MacDonald, Boardwalk Empire) grows up under the guidance of her mother Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson, Men In Black 3), and her father King Fergus (Billy Connolly, The Hobbit: There and Back Again). Under their tutelage, she is both semi-versed in the arts of decorum and the ways of the king's court, and masterfully skilled in archery and being headstrong. Along with her three younger triplet red-headed brothers Harris, Hubert, and Hamish, she gives the help and her parents much to deal with. When three letters come to the queen, Merida is told that she is to be betrothed to a son of one of the other three clans, to be decided by a test of skill of Merida's choosing. Realizing that the sons of Lord Macintosh (Graig Ferguson, Winnie the Pooh), Lord Dingwall (Robbie Coltrane, Arthur Christmas), and Lord MacGuffin (Kevin McKidd, Grey's Anatomy) are not to her liking, she throws the competition, storms off to the forest, and reopens the rift between the four clans. In the forest, the mystical Will-of-the-Wisps lead Merida to an old witch's cottage where she trades a necklace for a spell that will change her fate. Unfortunately, every spell comes at a price and Merida must learn a harsh lesson before it is too late for her and those she loves.

To start, the visuals of Brave are stunning, from every leaf hanging on the trees in the Scottish Highland forest, to the cascades of waters spilling down in a waterfall from the craggy cliffs, to every strand of Princess Merida's red flowing mane of hair. Pixar Animation Studios, for the first time in twenty-five years, completely rewrote their animation computer systems in order to make all of these much more complex visuals even possible. From the surreal blues of the Will-of-the-Wisps to the soaring fly-overs of the pristine mirrored lakes, every shot is gorgeous. And in typical Pixar fashion, the directors and animators take painstaking effort to set every scene with just the right light, tone, and tempo. In one scene where Merida finds herself in the forest overnight, the weak light of the morning that wakes her is cast with the perfect pale, cold diffusion.

In all of Pixar's films, the character of Merida denotes the first of their films with a main female character. All of their films, except for maybe Up, had female love interests or supporting female characters. In Brave, though, although there is a hoard of male characters with bows, swords, and guile, they fill a noisy back saddle to Merida's story. Brave is a story of teenage angst, rebelling against parents and their wishes, and learning the harsh lessons of responsibility and making the right decisions for one's self and family. Can Merida understand the importance of tradition and duty, although it may curtail her freedom as a young woman? Will the spell that she buys from the old witch give her what she wants or will it have dire consequences that she has yet to realize?

Brave truly centers around the forgotten bonds between a mother and her daughter. As Merida comes to age, Elinor has been training her and grooming her for the role of wife to one of the princes of one of the other Scottish clans. All the time, Merida sees her mother's instructions as mindless routine that keeps her from her love of her quiver of bolts and bow. and riding through the forest at break neck speeds on her horse. All she wants is to be free. Both need to remember that there is some common ground to stand on. The question is how will either of them come to that understanding?

Brave is funny, like the Pixar films before it, but it is the first fairy tale Pixar has put to screen. Parts Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, Brave is a darker film in tone and comes with a more mature theme that may be beyond the enjoyment of the most young audience goers. Sure, Merida's brothers Harris, Hubert, and Hamish play silent mischievous roles to smiles, and the clan suitors for Merida are pretty silly, but the subject matter is more grim and sometimes more dire. In addition to the effects of the spell that Merida allows to be cast, an older spell from years ago could possibly rear its furry, fang-filled head, with dark, scary results. Parents be warned, Brave is not the next Tangled.

Brave is a fine addition to the Pixar family of films. Different from its predecessors with a strong female lead and a more mature theme, the film looks away from the kid-friendliness of talking toys or a world of talking cars, or even superheroes with a dysfunctional family dynamic. Instead, we are treated to a beautifully rendered world of centuries gone by, with the same issues that many kids and teenagers are facing today. If you are brave enough, loose that arrow and let it fly!

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WORTH: Matinee or BluRay

Men In Black 3

Back To The Future

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Rated: PG-13  Sci-fi action violence, and brief suggestive content
Release Date: May 25, 2012
Runtime:  1 hr 43 mins

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Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Writers: Lowell Cunningham, David Koepp, Etan Cohen, Jeff Nathanson, Michael Soccio
Cast:  Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Emma Thompson, Bill Hader, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alice Eve

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SYNOPSIS: Agent J travels back in time to MIB's early years in the 1960s in order to stop an alien from assassinating his friend Agent K and changing history.

REVIEW: Barry Sonnenfeld, director of both Men in Black, Men in Black II, plus Get Shorty and both Addams Family films, returns ten years after the last MIB film to let us catch another glimpse of the the odd couple agents that entralled us in the original film in 1997. Using a collective of writers for the third installment, Sonnenfeld employs the scribing talents of Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder), David Koepp (Angels and Demons), Jeff Nathanson (Tower Heist), and Michael Soccio (The Kings of Queens), all based on the original comic by Lowell Cunningham.

Agent J (Will Smith, Seven Pounds) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones, Captain America: The First Avenger) continue to thwart alien incidents that affect New York and the outer boroughs, Agent J still wondering why his partner is so sullen and stoic. One of Agent K's early arrests, Boris the Animal (Jermaine Clement, Dinner for Schmucks), escapes from the super maximum Lunar Max moon prison with forty years of hatred for the man who took his freedom and one of his arms. Hatching a plan to erase the one mistake of his past, Boris promptly finds an illegal time jump device with the expressed focus to kill Agent K before he is arrested and before he loses an arm. When Agent J wakes the next day and is the only person to remember that Agent K was just alive yesterday instead of being killed in 1969, the new head of MIB Agent O (Emma Thompson, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2) points Agent J to the same source for time jumping that Boris had used, an electronics store owner Jeffrey Price (Michael Chemus, The Big C). Once in the past, Agent J comes across the younger, more hopeful and easy-going Agent K (Josh Brolin, True Grit), head Agent X (David Rasche, United 93) and a young vibrant Ms. O (Alice Eve, The Raven) in an attempt to save his partner before Agent K becomes nothing more than a distant memory.

Starting in 1997, Barry Sonnenfeld brought Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith together as the supreme odd couple protecting the earth from the scum of the universe. With the veteran, seen-too-much-in-his-career Agent K and the young, hot-headed upstart policeman turned naive intergalactic cop, the first entry based on the Malibu Comics had plenty of action, comedy and story to go around. Five years later, the crew returned with another adventure that combined comedy, a cast of quirky alien characters and villains, and a story worth telling. Now, fifteen years after the start of their journey, Agents J and K return for possibly their last adventure.

In Men In Black 3, the spirit of the story continues seamlessly from the first sequel - even with so much time passed. Tommy Lee and Will settle into the same crotchety rhythm that was so appealing in the first two films. Like in the second movie, though, Tommy Lee Jones' role is critical but diminished. In fact, in Men In Black 3, Tommy Lee sets the stage for the tale but disappears altogether in the wrinkled timeline in favor of the younger version in Brolin. Smith has to take a brand new tact with Brolin's young Agent K, unsure how the young agent turns into the cranky old man that recruited him into the MIB. Sonnenfeld makes sure to keep the same chrome and curved look and feel as the other MIB movies, with the addition of 60s era cars, fashions, and politics. And Brolin does entertain as he nails the young Agent K with his tone and mannerisms.

One of the things that seems to be missing from MIB3 is an edge of humor. In MIB, we were delighted by a talking pug, a morgue clerk embodied by David Cross, a pawn shop alien Jack Jeebs (Tony Shalhoub, Monk) and a twitchy insectoid alien in a meat suit named Edgar played well with Vincent D'Onofrio. In MIB2, Shalhoub, Cross and the pug returned, and the evil shape-shifting villainess Serleena (Lara Flynn Boyle) was accompanied by the loony and goofy side kick Scrad (Johnny Knoxville). In MIB3, the villain Boris is all venom and bony shards, with no redeeming or humorous qualities. The pug is gone. Cross and Shalhoub are missing in action. The worms are back in brief cameos and the majority of the jokes rest squarely on Smith's shoulders. He has broad shoulders, but even Smith can only handle so much. Michael Stuhlbarg (Hugo) is cast as the last of his kind fifth-dimensional alien Griffin who sees all possible futures at once and who may hold the key to defending the modern day alien invasion with a 1960s trinket, reminding me of a overly sedate young Robin Williams.

Men In Black 3 has dazzling practical and creature effects. Rick Baker mixes 1960s nostalgia with wonderful CGI FX with the many layered creepy crawly alien assassin Boris. The story continues in the fine tradition that Sonnenfeld, Jones and Smith crafted fifteen years ago. The story feels both rushed and leisurely at times, taking in many sights without the opportunity to soak in the ambiance. Smith's Agent J asks Brolin's Agent K how old he was with the response of twenty-nine. Agent J comments that he must have some city miles on 'em. It's always fun to peek into the world of MIB, but it may be time for some additional new blood or time to hang up the suit and shades.

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WORTH:  Matinee or DVD