Famous Author Harlan Ellison’s Incisive YouTube Review of ‘Saving Mr. Banks’

By
Greg Diamond
– December 18, 2013Posted in: Disney, Fresh Juice, movies
Mr. Banks & children

Mr. Banks forces his children to watch author Harlan Ellison’s ten-minute evisceration of the new film that celebrating their movie, “Saving Mr. Banks,” which is very mean towards P. L. Travers.

For those of you who fail to understand that my own style of writing — long, with ample use of asides, side-references, and other subordinate clauses en route (at least one hopes) to a final point — is simply part of my cultural heritage, I give you the famously creative and acerbic science-fiction author Harlan Ellison, who (after meandering through almost 50% of the ten-minute video simply to get to his obscenely tendered thesis statement) tells you exactly why the technically brilliant Disney movie “Saving Mr. Banks” is in some critical respects truly execrable. (And yes, that sentence above was written so as to be intentionally and gratuitously convoluted.  It’s fun.)

We can use this as a Open Thread for holiday film criticism in general. Following Ellison’s path, no clear spoilers, although you can refer elliptically to your emotional reaction to them as much as you’d like.

Here’s a special bonus video that I believe contains the best to come out of the movie version of Mary Poppins — remixed. (There’s a better version, but I can’t find it.)

And here’s a trailer that might be argued to better suit the spirit of the P.L. Travers novel.

And here’s P .L. Travers herself, in this BBC special (part 1 of 6 below), though it doesn’t get to much about her until about four minutes in:

First, it follows the stage musical, about which one commenter says:

I think it was wrong, on every single level, and maybe illegal, to make this musical. The stage version, not the movie I mean. Ms. Travers said in her will, that she wished that if a stage show be made, it not have the Sherman bros. and nothing with Disney associated with it…and this stomps on that request! Not cool!

There’s a lot more to the story than what you’ll find in the movie….

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)