“Unlike Walt Disney” insists PL Travers, “Mary Poppins is the very enemy of whimsy and sentiment”. Coupled with the author’s determination that Disney’s film contains no singing nor animation, the stage is set for a biopic that is practically perfect in every way.

Flashing back and forth between early 1900’s rural Australia and 1960’s Los Angeles, Saving Mr. Banks is never jarring in linking Travers’ memories of her childhood with her protectiveness over the adaptation of her books. Whether it is via the use of dreams, unwelcome recollections or juxtaposing the rehearsal for a song with her father’s doomed speech at a public fair, Travers’ attachment to her characters is heart-achingly realised. The viewer comes to understand and appreciate that for Travers, Mary Poppins is family.

Though her disposition is overtly set in stark contrast to her overly-cheerful chauffeur, Emma Thompson avoids turning the author into a caricature. Her cantankerous behaviour, moulded by a deep sense of loss, makes her eventual surrender to the delight of “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” even more uplifting. In his portrayal of Disney, Hanks is more the businessman at the head of a studio rather than the Uncle Walt we fondly recall from his television show. Only when he is in astride a carousel in Disneyland do we see a glint of the mogul's inner child.

Nevertheless, like Walt himself, it is whimsy and sentiment that prevails.