I understand the holiday season is all about being thankful for your family & friends and giving to others, butttttttttttttttttttttttttt….what if instead of buying people Christmas gifts, I just spend that money on seeing all the potentially awesome movies that have recently come out or are coming out before the end of the month? Would that be OK? What if I spend the money on the movies but illegally video tape those movies and give copies of them to people as Christmas gifts?

Here’s the incomplete list, in no particular order, of movies that are being released in December that I’m interested in:

• Out Of The Furnace
• Inside Llewyn Davis
• American Hustle
• Saving Mr. Banks
• Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
• Her
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• Lone Survivor
• Grudge Match

Just kidding on that last one. I don’t need to see a fake boxing match between two guys whose combined age is 137.

Of course I won’t be able to see all these new movies while they’re in the theater, but the ones I do see I’ll be certain to review so none of you readers accidentally see something terrible during this time of joy. You can bet your bottom dollar (who says that still?) that Anchorman and American Hustle reviews will be coming soon.

And that brings me to today’s review.

It’s tough to fairly rank Saving Mr. Banks because the memory of seeing that movie last weekend comes with the memory of my girlfriend and I having to walk three miles from the theater to our apartment at 12:30a.m. after the movie ended (that’s what happens when the theater is in an area with not a lot of foot traffic after midnight, your phone dies, and the buses are all shut down for the night).

Let me back up for a second because maybe some of you haven’t heard of this movie. It’s the story of the lengthy battle between Walt Disney and the author of Mary Poppins to get that diabetes-promoting nanny (spoonful of sugar? really?) onto the big screen. Wikipedia calls it a “historical comedy-drama” and doesn’t ever mention the movie being based on true events. I’m thinking the movie dramatizes the actual struggle between these main characters enough that they couldn’t market it as “the true story behind how Mary Poppins became a classic movie.”

The most basic way to describe the plot of the movie is this: An angry Australian woman who wrote the book Mary Poppins is playing hardball with Walt Disney as he bends over backwards to buy the rights from her. We see flashbacks to her childhood that show how she had to deal with an alcoholic father and a mother who tried to commit suicide. But we still dislike the adult version of this person because it makes no sense that her tough childhood would cause her to be such an asshole about this transaction. But then the screenwriter and musical composers of the film sing “Let’s Go Fly A Kite” in front of this woman and she suddenly gets up and dances and all ends well….or, more appropriately for a Disney movie, “they all lived happily ever after.”

The movie had many entertaining moments, most of them coming from the hilarious trio that comprised the aforementioned screenwriter and the composer brothers. But my biggest issue leaving the theater was that I would rather have watched the actual movie Mary Poppins than the only-somewhat-interesting backstory of how Walt Disney finally got his hands on that property.

You should see this movie if: You are a huge Disney fan (the person, Walt, or the company); Mary Poppins is one of your favorite movies of all-time; You are so obsessed with Mary Poppins that you’ll sit through a two-hour movie just to hear a couple of the songs from the original movie; you think any movie with Tom Hanks is worth seeing (exactly what drew me to this movie); you like unlikeable main characters.

You should not see this movie if: Slow-moving plots are not your thing; You need lots of action, drama or comedy in your movies; You hated Mary Poppins; You hate Disney (the person or the company); You hate Tom Hanks; You’re scared of kites and/or pears.

On the Ross Watchability Scale (RWS), I give Saving Mr. Banks a 5.5 out of 10. The novelty of it being a sorta behind-the-scenes of the making of Mary Poppins was the only thing that made it interesting…and that carried the movie all the way to slightly above average.

It’s not entirely worthless, but in this holiday season of other awesome movies and other non-movie-watching priorities, I wouldn’t suggest rushing out to the theater to see it. And if you do see it and don’t have “Let’s Go Fly A Kite” in your head for the next 72 hours, then I’m extremely jealous of you.