From Sept 16, 2013
SCORE: A+
What can I say? I'm a sucker for documentaries.
‘The boys’ is an amazing look at the Sherman Brothers, who wrote just about every song for Disney and Disneyland in the 60s and 70s, as well as the 70s "Charlotte's Web" movie by Hannah-Barbera.
I’ve seen some reviews that people think the whole convoluted relationship between the brothers was invented just to sell the film. Wow. That would take an amazing act of cynicism. It is what it is. They were two very different people who happened to be brothers and made amazing music together.
I don’t know why anyone would second-guess that. Roy E. Disney even describes Robert Sherman as more “Feed the Birds” while Richard Sherman is more “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” I feel that that’s a great description of the two men.
In the film you learn all about Robert Sherman’s trials during WWII and the things he saw that still haunt him to this day. You also learn about Richard Sherman’s first family and how to left them to pursue his music-writing career. They explain that “Feed the Birds” from ‘Mary Poppins’ was Walt Disney’s favorite song and how he would ask the brothers over to his office every Friday to play it for him before leaving for the weekend. They also give a lot of good background info on the Sherman Brothers’ best film: ‘Mary Poppins’.
And the film even goes into their work with Annette Funicello, their work on ‘The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh’ (one of my favorite Disney films), their work on ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ and how everyone thinks it’s a Disney film when it’s not.(It was actually written by James Bond scribe Ian Fleming, produced by Albert R. Broccoli, and released by United Artists.)
All really good stuff. Very intersting.
