Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, The Jungle Book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, It's a Small World. We all recognize them as beloved Disney movies and songs. But can you name the team responsible for most of the music and lyrics in these films, as well as lots of others, and the songs for the theme park rides at Disneyland and Walt Disney world?
Bob Sherman and his brother Dick Sherman, now 85 and 82 respectively, are the genius behind these songs we all love to sing. Now a new documentary about these two brothers, whose father, songwriter Al Sherman (not the Allan Sherman who wrote Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah - we wrote about him in November), emigrated to America from Russia in 1909, has been released as a DVD, which we watched Saturday night on Netflix (It's an instant play selection).
It's a fascinating story, about how they became the first and only songwriters to be hired by Disney Studios and how much Walt Disney depended on them to express the emotions in these films through songs like A Spoonful of Sugar, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Feed the Birds, and It's a Small World After All.
The feature-length documentary, conceived, produced and directed by two of the songwriters' sons, takes you behind the scenes of the Hollywood magic factory and offers a rare glimpse of a unique creative process at work. It also explores a deep and longstanding rift that has kept the brothers personally estranged throughout much of their unparalleled professional partnership.
We give the film two thumbs up. Here's the trailer. In addition to the Netflix DVD rental or instant play option, it's also avaiable through January 14 on Starz On Demand, and can be purchased at Amazon.com or any DVD retailer. Enjoy!
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