What about that Harlan Ellison review on YouTube I pointed to a month
ago? And we get to thank Disney for the lame DMCA, oh eyepatch. ;-)
On 01/23/2014 01:08 PM, TurquoiseB wrote:
*/This is a strange movie for *me* to be reviewing, and even stranger
to be reviewing positively, but react to it positively I did. After
all, it's a Disney movie, and worse, it's *about* Walt Disney, someone
whose sensibilities with regard to fairy tales and the dilution of
them I do not admire.
And yet. I was charmed by many things in this film. I felt that the
script was wonderfully written, and directed just as well. And there
have been exactly *zero* other films this year that knocked my socks
off by the strength of their "ensemble performances" the way this one
did. The combination of Emma Thompson as the irascible P.L. Travers,
arguing tooth and nail with Walt Disney (Tom Hanks, better than I
would have imagined) over whether she was going to give him the film
rights to her book "Mary Poppins" are pretty much unbeatable from
start to finish. Add to them Paul Giamatti as her limo driver in L.A.,
Colin Farrell as her father in flashbacks, and Annie Rose Buckley as
Travers herself as a child, and this is pretty much a dream cast,
crafting a dream.
Yes, it's schmaltzy, yes, it's a bit of a tearjerker in parts, and
yes, it's manipulative. But it *works*, and it's a damned pity that
the Academy Awards chose to ignore it, except for its musical score.
The Golden Globes, to their credit, at least nominated Emma Thompson
as Best Actress, and in my opinion she acted circles around any of the
other nominees, or at least the ones whose films I've seen so far.
The real P.L. Travers was supposedly a total bitch who, according to
her own adoptive grandchildren, "died loving no one and with no one
loving her." This film showed a better side of her, one that I wish
the old tyrant had gotten to see in life. If she had, she might have
lightened up a bit and learned to laugh at herself a bit more, and
thus had a happier life.
/*
