"Saving Mr. Banks" won't save you from needing a tissue...

You want a tear-jerker?  John Lee Hancock can make a tear-jerker.   Oh, yeah, sure, Saving Mr. Banks is a “Disney” picture, and that fact sells a lot more tickets than Mr. Hancock’s name does, I believe in giving praise where praise is due.  Although the director’s name is not featured in any of Disney’s promotion of Saving Mr. Banks, with the aid of a well-written script and some marvelous acting by a few of the finest film actors working today, Mr. Hancock has done it again.  If you saw The Rookie (the Dennis Quaid one, not the Clint Eastwood one) a decade or so ago, or The Blind Side more recently, then you know what I mean.  

This interpretation of the story of how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) doggedly pursued and browbeat author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) into granting him the film rights to the first of her beloved children’s books featuring the supernanny Mary Poppins.  Armed with storyboards and songs already created for the proposed movie, he and his creative team try their darndest to convince Travers that her fears of her dearest creation being corrupted are unfounded, although they seemingly fail miserably in the attempt.  We see how some of everyone’s favorite tunes from the resulting movie were created, and how Mrs. Travers did her best to passively-aggressively sabotage Disney’s team’s efforts at almost every turn.

As we follow these events, we also see flashbacks to turn-of-the-(twentieth) century Australia, and how Mrs. Travers, then a mere child of eight years, shared a very close bond with her alcoholic father (Colin Farrell), as both father and daughter were dreamers incredibly vivid imaginations.   They travel to a small hamlet off in the Australian boondocks, apparently so the father can take a new job, and he does his best to make their near-poverty as bearable as possible with all sorts of make-believe tales with his daughters, but his ever-present flask of hooch and looks of disapproval from his wife shows us that he needs something more to dull the ache of his failures.  The events of Mrs. Travers’ childhood have such influence on her dealings with the Disney folks fifty years later that the two storylines are by necessity intertwined.

Tom Hanks may be a bit beefier in the face than Old Walt was, but his mannerisms are spot-on.  He is marvelous here, but we have come to expect nothing less from him. Emma Thompson also gives an awards-worthy performance, doing her usual fantastic job of portraying the “proper” English lady with something of an attitude.  With the pedigree of these two mega-star actors, my singing their praises would not give you any information that you would not already assume before seeing the movie, so I’ll use this space to give some kudos to Colin Farrell.

I’ve long thought that Farrell is one of the more under-appreciated film actors of this generation.  His films have rarely been huge commercial successes, and his sometimes tabloid-fodder personal life may keep him from receiving more accolades than he has to date, but his performance here just reaffirms my belief in his talent, primarily making an audience sympathetic to his character.  We saw it in In Bruges, we saw it (albeit briefly) in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, and even in London Boulevard (although it didn’t help that movie so much).  This movie is the high point of his career so far, in my humble opinion.

Although there are plenty of lighter moments in Saving Mr. Banks, it is a very touching story of must how much a child’s life is molded and shaped by his or her parents’ love, and how parents express that love.  The movie struck me with a notion that is probably so obvious to many of you - how grave a responsibility being a parent is; how every word spoken and action taken, especially those not even intended to be life lessons,  is absorbed by a child and used as a guideline for their own decision-making someday. P.L. Travers’ father, obviously a man who loved his children with a passion not many men may equal, used his imagination and love of tale-spinning not only to mold his daughter’s personality and set her course as a storyteller in her own right, but also as a means of getting his entire family through their difficult times.  

Of course, a movie like this could only have been made by the Disney studios.  The rights issues involved with Old Walt’s likeness alone mean that only the Mouse House could do it, but one would be hard-pressed to name another studio or production company who can create such a heart-warming tale.  If you can recall those live-action Disney films from the 60s like Follow me, Boys, or more recent ones like Invincible, then you’ll understand my meaning.  Especially touching is a scene in which Old Walt explains to Mrs. Travers that he finally understands the real meaning of Mary Poppins, and just how much it means to Mrs. Travers, and why he can be entrusted to translate that story to film faithfully.

I didn’t see Mary Poppins myself until I was over forty years of age, so while I do find it a very good movie, it has never held a very dear place in my heart.  I do accept that it does for countless others, though, so If you are one of those folks, then I believe you would enjoy this tale of how one of your favorite stories came to the silver screen. Even if you aren’t one of those people, however, you would indeed be a heartless creature if you didn’t find this lovely story as endearing as the tale of the mysterious nanny with the magical umbrella.

"Seven Psychopaths" might be two or three too many.

I recently wrote that bad reviews were much more fun to write than good ones, but sitting here wondering what to say about Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths is making me feel that while writing bad reviews may be fun, writing so-so reviews is pretty dang difficult.  Throwing out a few sentences into a blank MS Word document, looking at them, rearranging them several times, and hoping some sort of coherent train of thought manifests itself as a result is the beginning of the process that (sometimes) leads to something I’m not ashamed to read back to myself, and then allow you, Dear Reader, to see.  The few sentences that get thrown onto the screen seem to come a bit faster, and contain a bit more wit, however, when I find myself on either end of the disgust/praise spectrum than they do when I’m somewhere in the apathetic middle.  Watching Colin Farrell play a writer struggling to get farther than his title of Seven Psychopaths makes me glad I don’t have to resort to some of the ends to which he must go for inspiration.

Farrell plays Marty, a screenwriter who has fixated himself on a title, “Seven Psychopaths,” and now strains his brain to flesh out a narrative from those two words.  His environment presents obstacles, as his girlfriend is a nag, badgering him about getting started and making headway on the screenplay, and his best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) is apparently a slacker/loser, making an existence out of stealing dogs and then returning them to grateful owners for the reward money.   Oh, and it goes without saying that Marty, being Irish, and a writer to boot, drinks to excess, to the point he can’t remember his girlfriend kicking him out of the house the night before he awakens on a sofa at Billy’s place. 

On the sofa beside him is Billy’s latest “hostage,” a Shih Tzu that happens to be owned by Charlie (Woody Harrelson), a gangster of some sort who loves this furry little turd beyond comprehension and sets out on a murderous crusade to find it, one that leads to Billy’s co-hort Hans (Christopher Walken), and then to Marty.  During all of this, Billy has provided Marty some story fodder in the form of pointing out a newspaper story about a current serial killer who targets mob figures, and has even taken it upon himself to find some research opportunities for Marty by placing a newspaper ad for psychopaths to come and be interviewed, without Marty’s approval and against his better judgment and survival instincts. 

The plot weaves and jumps through Billy, Hans and Marty’s escaping Charlie’s goons, the interviewing of one of the psychopath want-ad respondents, and the visualizing of their brainstorming sessions for the screenplay – ideas that range from Vietnamese villagers and hookers in Vegas hotel rooms, to a mixed-race couple on murdering-of-murderers spree through 1960s-Civil-Rights-era America, to a current-day mass nighttime shootout in a Los Angeles graveyard.  They flee to Joshua Tree National Park in the California desert, have some deep philosophical discussions, and eventually have a showdown with Charlie to determine who gets to keep the Shih Tzu.  You know, just a quiet, introspective character study of a film... 

So was the whole thing a figment of Marty’s imagination, some sort of writer’s mental process that led to the screenplay he’s shown completing at the movie’s end?  I leave that for you to determine, but there’s probably no right or wrong answer to that question.  The opening scene of the movie is definitely one of Marty working on his story, and the tag sequence that interrupts the final credits is almost certainly a dream sequence, too, so one must wonder just how much of what happens in between is imaginary as well. 

Anyway, Farrell is pretty good here, as he usually is.  It seems he realizes that he's the center of sanity in this story, and the nutjobs around him are the entertainment, so his struggle to maintain a grasp on his less-stable companions sort of mirrors the audience's trying to keep up with what's actually happening to them and what's their vivid imaginations running wild. Rockwell has shown us he can "act out" with the best of them in such fare as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the first Charlie's Angels flick (yes, I saw that - don't judge), and Walken is... well, he's Christopher Walken. Some people (although I'm not certain that I'm one of them) subscribe to the theory that Christopher Walken in anything can be entertaining, if nothing else than waiting to see if he'll demand more cowbell at any given moment.   

This movie was written and directed by Martin McDonagh, and I liked what I believe he was trying to do here, but the final product on screen seemed like he was trying a bit too hard, and I think parody/satire/alternate reality depends on an effortless-ness in order to succeed.  While not exactly the same genre, I enjoyed his In Bruges about four years ago a lot more than this.  Although I could sense his style in the characters and dialogue of Seven Psychopaths, I thought In Bruges was much funnier and don’t feel like it tried anywhere near as hard. 

I wouldn’t have minded paying for the tickets for this one, but fortunately, I didn’t have to (thank you, Regal Cinemas Crown Club rewards points!).  That said, if you’re a Colin Farrell fan, or even a Sam Rockwell fan, then you might find this enjoyable once it pops up on Cinemax a year from now (and this one definitely feels like Cinemax – not HBO…).  Maybe you’ll have an easier time of coming up with something witty to say about it afterwards than I did.