In Steven Spielberg’s underrated sci-fi stormer Minority Report, ads, which are now monstrously overbearing bright and jumpy moving images that are on everything from cereal boxes to the walls of hallways and corridors, scan your eyes, figure out your identity, and make a personalized advertisement aimed to give a “just for you” feeling to ensnare the unsuspecting customer into purchasing the product. 40 years earlier than the setting of Report we already have Google Ads, collecting data on your search history and hitting you with ads for items you’re more likely to purchase (much to the annoyance of anyone who remembers Youtube before the intrusive ads before almost every video). I had Minority Report on my mind every second of Saving Mr. Banks, the new Disney Film that dramatizes the making of the classic Mary Poppins. It plays like puffed up propaganda that hits you with every sentimentalized schmaltzy tool the filmmakers could think of, hoping it’ll hit some personalized memory of Poppins to hit as wide a demographic as possible. Honestly, it sorta works, but even so, it seems as though Saving Mr. Banks should have a label under the poster that reads “artificial flavoring” to caution viewers away from ingesting unhealthy additives.

Much debate has been made over the fictional accuracy of the Saving Mr. Banks tale,which dramatizes Walt Disney bringing the famous P.L. Travers book Mary Poppins to the silver screen. To tell the story, the push to adapt Poppins is intersected with a set of flashbacks from Travers’ childhood, designed to inform the genesis of the famous character. Tom Hanks perfectly personifies what we perceive as Walt Disney’s main trait: a joyous child like whimsy that fuels all his entire persona. Good as he is, he’s better in Captain Philips, which is just as well since this film is entirely Emma Thompson’s, playing P.L. Travers. Famously, she resisted Disney’s attempts to buy the property, however she insisted upon obtrusive creative control, even insisting the color red not appear anywhere in the film. Her stubborn and interfering nature is overplayed to an exaggerated level, just as Disney is as much of a cartoon as Mickey Mouse. But, for all bickering over the story’s faithfulness, It doesn’t much matter-- Hollywood stories are ruthlessly dishonest all the time. Instead, what deserves to be ridiculed is the film’s absurd pandering to dangerous thematic content.