I hate starting movie reviews with stuff like “wow this is the damn-near perfect film of the year, go see it right now!  I really mean it!”  However.  Wow, this is the damn-near perfect film of the year.  Go see it right now.  I really mean it.  Saving Mr. Banks may not be the most historically accurate film out there (that’d be Django Unchained, of course), but it got me laughing, wanting to sing along, and surreptitiously grabbing the ol’ Kleenex.  Director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) scores another touchdown here (yeah, sue me) with a film that tugs at heartstrings and does Disney a solid; gets folks to wanna re-watch Mary Poppins.  Yeah, not a bad trick.  But then again who doesn’t love dancing penguins?

Uh, that’d be P.L. Travers, for those of you that haven’t seen the trailer for this film.  Let’s get something straight right off the bat; Saving Mr. Banks IS NOT 100% ACCURATE. If you want accuracy, be prepared to be bummed; there was no happy handshaking at the end of Real Life, but instead, a writer totally pissed off that her book has been mangled by the Disney machinery.  But Travers’ hard-scrabble young life is pretty much spot-on.  Are you with me so far?  Good.

Because with the film’s jumping from “present day” 1961 and Travers’ childhood in 1906, there are two stories here.  Both are excellent, and I’m not just saying that because the always fabulous Ruth Wilson (Luther) plays P.L.’s mother Mrs. Goff.  Or that Colin Farrell gives the best performance I’ve ever seen him present (I’m really hoping he’ll get a Supporting Actor nod here).  It’s because Hancock is able to take these stories and blend them in such a way that each not only compliments the other, they add to each other, making a cohesive whole.

Emma Thompson is starchy and formidable as P.L. Travers, the author that Walt Disney begs for the rights to Mary Poppins.  And Tom Hanks plays on his own cinema icon status as cinema icon Walt D.  This Disney is a guy that succeeded in the “trickle down” idea; each person that worked for The Mouse House (at least in that era) had the same can-do, positive attitude, or could fake it wonderfully.  Makes me wish I’d been alive then, working there.  Paul “I’m fantastic in everything” Giamatti plays Travers’ L.A. chauffeur Ralph, who puts up with a whole lot of rude before Travers eventually warms.  What, like you didn’t think that was gonna happen?  This is a DISNEY fairy tale y’all, there’s gonna be a happy ending.  Anyway, Giamatti and Thompson have great onscreen chemistry.

What else is there to love?  The jazzy version of “Hi-Ho”, perfectly tweaked for this period piece and used as background music at the studio.  The way that this film doesn’t gloss over the fact that Walt was a junkie for the tobaccy (Disney died in ‘66 from complications due to lung cancer, and the studio has a smoke-free policy in it’s films) even while never really showing him puffing.  And most important, the fact that I was so sucked into this film that as the final credits rolled I realized that 15 minutes in I’d completely stopped taking notes and just sat back and enjoyed.  Good job, Mouse House.

As a title, Saving Mr. Banks seems a bit odd, but all will be revealed with the story.  Folks who love a good “coming back from adversity” tale will especially love this film, even though you’ll definitely need a tissue or five.  Oh, and stay for the credits, as you’ll get a peek at the real-life people that lived this story.  Am I sad that there’s more pixie dust than personal reality in this film?  Absolutely not.  Because as Mary Poppins will tell you, a spoonful of sugar ain’t a bad thing..