Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysSaving Mr. Banks Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
A writer and filmmakers negotiate the adaptation of Mary Poppins while childhood memories shape the story’s emotional argument. Examine authorship, collaboration, and the limits of biographical storytelling.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 2013
- Genre
- Biographical adaptation drama
- U.S. rating
- PG-13
- Runtime
- Approx. 125 minutes
- Director
- John Lee Hancock
- Screenplay
- Kelly Marcel & Sue Smith
- Based on
- Dramatization of the Mary Poppins adaptation process
- Music
- Thomas Newman
- Featured cast
- Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell & Ruth Wilson
- Story setting
- Dramatized Los Angeles · 1961; Australian childhood flashbacks
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- Alcohol misuse, parental illness and death, and intense childhood distress.
- A mother’s apparent suicide attempt involving water; adult themes and some language.
- Grief and family instability; do not require personal disclosure or treat one childhood event as a complete explanation of a person.
Preview your edition, follow school viewing and permission policies, and provide an appropriate alternative assignment. Suggested grades 9–12 are Teach Arcade’s classroom recommendation, separate from the film’s U.S. rating.
Classroom Connections
Use scene evidence to explore the topics above. Pair historical portrayals with reliable sources, literary adaptations with their texts, and animated metaphors with appropriate factual context.
Film details, advisories & classroom context: Studio film information · Content advisory (spoilers)