Zippety-Doo-Dah

One day when I needed an uplifting movie, I saw Saving Mr. Banks, and it delivered an entertaining story for that afternoon.  But in the days after seeing it, I decided to investigate the truth of the story in several sources.  As I'd suspected, it wasn't a true story; it was, as one writer said, "a lavish infomercial" for the Disney brand.

I'm not a fan of the Disney brand--but I did go to Disneyland once, probably the same year Travers is shown to have visited the cheery theme park, early sixties.  In the movie, I got a glimpse of the park just as I remembered it.

In the story on screen, the avuncular Walt convinces the author of Mary Poppins to sell him the movie rights for her popular book.  They both had scarred childhoods and he promises to make artful use of hers--as he claims he's done with his own.  She finally agrees--though she's portrayed as an uptight author intent on not having her story made into one of his cartoons.  No animated penguins, not one stroke of the color red.

The best scenes in the movie were worth the price of admission: the interactions between a young girl with her fun-loving, adoring father; the scenery of her childhood; the chagrin on her adult face when she walked into her Hollywood suite to find it filled with stuffed animals, balloons, and fruit baskets.  She tosses a big grinning Mickey into the corner--where he will stay until he learns to be "more nuanced."  She takes one look at the cartoonish Winnie the Pooh and says, "Poor Milne!"

Disney Disneyfies everything--and this movie was Disneyfied to the hilt.  But what more can we expect from the master of cheerful endings and creators of characters who break into syrupy songs?

Consider Cinderella.  In the original Grimm tale, we don't have pumpkin carriages and fairy god-mothers and happy ending; we have bleeding feet and eyes plucked out.  Grimm's stories were grim, gutsy, bloody, and good. Disney and his crew plucked the nuances out of those stories, turned everything into cutesy fluff, and sent audiences out into the world humming happy tunes.

Seeing this movie was nostalgic--I'll give it that--and I wasn't tempted to walk out.  The cast was good, the story engaging.  But it wasn't a true story, and to me that's important--since it's based on the conflicts of a writer.  It was sanitized with a fakey happy ending tacked on, Disney style, the truth flattened into a sweet tasty pancake.