Posted on 01/20/2014 4:31:38 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
The year is 1961.
A wonderful and kind and nice and glorious man named Walt Disney must convince a mean and nasty and crazy woman named P.L. Travers to allow him and his movie studio to do something really nice for his children and your children and everyone’s children. Our hero—call him Walt, everybody does, except P.L. Travers, because she’s mean and nasty and insists on “Mr. Disney”—wants to make a movie out of Travers’s book Mary Poppins, because he promised his kids he would, and a man never backs out on his promise to his kids. P.L. Travers is crazy because she doesn’t want him to do it and tries to sabotage the project by insisting he shouldn’t do it the way he knows it should be done. Unfortunately for all that is wonderful and nice and good, the crazy mean woman owns the rights because she happens to be the creator of Mary Poppins.
This is the plot of Saving Mr. Banks, starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers. It is a strange plot, because we know that Disney will prevail and the classic movie we’re seeing in chrysalis will, in three years’ time, become a beautiful butterfly starring Julie Andrews—the 25th-most-successful movie ever made. The sketches we see on the wall in the Disney studio office of the songwriting Sherman brothers look exactly like the Edwardian London that would soon appear in Mary Poppins (1964). We watch the Sherman brothers conceive “A Spoonful of Sugar.” We hear one of them play the melody to “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” We are meant to swoon when they and the screenwriter dance with Travers to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.” Mary Poppins the movie is all there, including the notion of casting Dick Van Dyke as...
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
“One thing that stood out in the review was Mr. Podhoretz’s slam on Disney movies of that era.”
I know! I’ve never seen the shaggy dog, but I’m sure I’ve seen the absent-minded professor.
As I recall (and I was a little kid, so who knows) Disney was always successful and made movies the whole family could enjoy. I don’t think anybody (Disney included) saw them as works of art, they were just entertainment, which is a fine thing to be quite frankly. That’s the lesson of “Sullivan’s Travels” which, if you’ve never seen it, is a great movie.
Oy, and he seems to take it all soooooo seriously. Very strange.
“A Spoonful of Sugar.” — The stirring ballad of soft Fascism.
Yeesh. The song has nothing to do with facism. It is about finding enjoyment in one’s own work, not about imposing social authority.
And “Feed the Birds” has nothing to do with socialism?
yes.
Sounds to me that perhaps Tim Burton may have been a better fit!
Well, of course, my real point is that Podheretz shouldn’t even be in the business of reviewing movies. He was a NY Post political editorialist as I remember and then suddenly he was moved to movies. But then The Times takes food critics and makes them political pundits. Go figure.
In any case, he is one of Disney’s most famous characters: a maroon!
Feed the Birds - a most beautiful song - is about charity. Sheesh. Some freepers have socialism on the brain morning, noon and night.
And “Chim-chim-cheree” isn’t the glorification of the working man?
I took my daughter to see it last night. It was a well designed and thoughtful movie. I’d recommend it. Easy.
You are engaging in satire, right?
Wasn’t it terrible that the little boy invested his money in the bank (you remember Dick Van Dyke playing the wheezing old capitalist singing about railroads and industry)?
The old lady in the park died because he didn’t give her a tuppance to feed the birds.
As a ‘lefty’, Hanks could have made Disney look like a right wing jerk, or worse, in subtle ways as the left loves to portray WD. Instead, you come away loving Disney and appreciating him as a hero.
I’m still shocked that he did “Return with Honor.”
Nothing, except in your mind.
Oh, why don’t you just go fly a kite!
There is an anti-semetic meme being pushed against Disney in the hollyweird dung heap. I think it is because Diney’s power house status threatens somebody and this is the best they can do to torture the dead.
Frankly I think Marry Poppins the movie is a vast improvement over the dark and dreary books. I also think the meme makes no sense at all given his working collegues and friends.
I DO think it makes sense for them to attack Disney because he was very anti union after he was attacked in california.
Disney World exists because California is stuck on stupid.
She never cried when old Yeller died
So do you think I'll cry when she's gone?
Confederate Railroad - She Never Cried
My experience was just the opposite. I had read and loved all of the Poppins books before the movie ever came out. I liked the movie but was very disappointed that it was not really Mary Poppins!
Well, there’s that side of it, too. I’m sure English schoolchildren were disappointed in the Disney movie.
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