First of all, the movie is delightful. My husband and I loved it. My daughter and her husband loved it. My teen-aged grandchildren loved it. I'll never think of Walt Disney again without seeing Tom Hanks.
The movie also has a very serious theme about the deleterius and long-term effect alcoholism has on the alcoholic's family.
It also treats Ms. Travers very gently, considering her very strange life and persona. Look her up.
Holy moly, you are right! I usually like Podhoretz’s reviews, but this one’s like a screed. Who writes a screed against an innocuous movie like “Saving Mr. Banks”? Even if it’s all nonsense, who cares?
Evidently John Podhoretz does. This is probably the strangest movie review I’ve ever read.
I’d like to see that movie too, I love “Mary Poppins”, it’s the first movie I remember seeing and my whole family LOVED it.
The Left ALWAYS tries to bring down DECENT people......this is just another easy mark for them since he's dead.
I thought the movie was excellent, and a wonderful recreation of 1961 LA, using the original locations (a triumph in ever-changing LA). Hate to disagree with him in this one review.
I see John Podhoretz wasn't born until 1961, so he can't have seen those movies when they came out. I was a little kid, and remember going to all of those, and loved them. They were supposed to be silly, they were kids movies for God's sake, and they were commercially successful. To hear John tell it, Disney never did anything good before or after Mary Poppins. But Disney also dominated early television every Sunday night with The Wonderful World of Disney.
Delightful is the word. Saw it yesterday afternoon and it was beautifully uncomfortable, resolving just as you would hope it would. Podhoretz is a curmudgeon.
I saw the movie a couple of weeks ago. It is an example of superb movie making.
An excellent movie in every respect.
I like Podhoretz, but he’s off the mark here.
Is it ok to say that John Podhoretz is Jewish?
Without belaboring the obvious, this is the reason for this hit piece. Can’t blame him. But it is not an honest review, it is colored with Mr Podhoretz hatred for things antisemitic.
Podhoretz has never had any business being a film reviewer. He’s completely incompetent at this job. And it’s not just because I, too, enjoyed this movie. He’s a bum of a movie critic. He’s just lucky hat he rode into journalism on the tailcoats of his father, Norman.
Having been to the Disney Studios (a relative worked there), I can tell you that is WAS heaven on earth. Every corridor is lined with the original art work of Disney and his genius artists. The grounds are gorgeous - and the canteen!
The 60s were a wonderful time for Disney entertainment. How dare he make fun of the Flubber movies! It was those movies that made Paul Lynde’s career (before he went off the rails, he was an hilarious actor). Disney brought British actors like Patrick McGoohan, Peter McEnery, Hayley Mills and Susan Hampshire to the American public in the 1960s.
He made Julie Andrews a star when another studio passed her over in favor of the wonderful but miscast Audrey Hepburn.
Mary Poppins, Pollyanna, the Flubber movies, The Jungle Book, 100 and 1 Dalmations! All created in the 60s.
This guy should be fired.
I remember as a young boy seeing 101 Dalmatians, Swiss Family Robinson and The Absent Minded Professor at the movies and I loved them. I remember watching the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday night and loving that too. Disney's animation set the standard. His movies such as Fantasia are truly masterpieces.
In fact, I even liked Mary Poppins which my mom took me to see in the movies one afternoon. My wife used to kid me and say I must have been a real nerd to have liked Mary Poppins.
Walt Disney made great movies for kids. That was his talent. Just before and after his death, the studio he founded almost went bankrupt without Walt's guidance. For someone like John Podhoretz to call Walt Disney mediocre is ridiculous.
“A Spoonful of Sugar.” — The stirring ballad of soft Fascism.
I took my daughter to see it last night. It was a well designed and thoughtful movie. I’d recommend it. Easy.
As for Tom Hanks being left-wing and whatnot, I check my politics at the door when entering a movie-house. If I had to apply a litmus test to every film I saw, I'd be limited to a few documentaries, horrid adaptations of "Atlas Shrugged", and Hobbit type fare.
So the movie did not portray P L Travers accurately...so what? If you are going to have a successful movie based on a true story, artistic license must be taken. The movie would not be the same if it ended with Disney telling Travers "that ship has sailed" at the premiere and having her storm away - never speaking to Disney again.
So ironically, the character P L Travers had to be sugarcoated just like her Mary Poppins had to be sugarcoated - in order to appeal to a wide movie audience.
Without belaboring the obvious, this is the reason for this hit piece. Can’t blame him. But it is not an honest review, it is colored with Mr Podhoretz hatred for things antisemitic.
Usually, it's the Left that dismisses a man and his work because of alleged "bigotry" towards some select group. Apparently, so-called conservatives like Podhoretz aren't immune from the disease of political correctness either.
If praising Disney as a cartoonist is wrong because he was allegedly anti-Semitic, I suppose we should ban Ford motor vehicles while we're at it. Come to think of it, if we are to damn the life and work of everyone who was racist, anti-Semitic, etc. by today's standards, we'd pretty much have to dismiss the entire canon of pre-1960's culture, science, and technology.
Re Dick Van Dyke, his TV show started in ‘61, which is also where the storyline of “Saving Mr. Banks” starts, but he debuted on Broadway in ‘59, and started doing “Bye Bye Birdie” the next year, and had had a career in TV and radio before that.