If you can you can sing all the songs from Mary Poppins and The Parent Trap or recall the lyrics from such pop hits as You're Sixteen or even Pineapple Princess -- yeah, Annette Funicello -- you should probably keep it to yourself.

But you should also probably see The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, because siblings Richard and Robert Sherman wrote all the songs in all the beloved Disney movies that defined the childhood of every Baby Boomer.

Richard and Robert Sherman wrote many Top Ten hit songs and six zillion songs for Disney (including It's a Small World After All) and have all the Oscars, Grammys, Golden Globes and BAFTAS you'd expect to show for it. They have a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and innumerable other global honours between them.

Too bad they didn't really get along.

According to The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, the celebrated songwriters were as different as chalk and cheese and their relationship during some 50 years of success could best be described as strained.

It took their adult sons -- Jeff and Greg Sherman -- to wade into this tale of estrangement, and the result is both a fascinating family story and an engaging history of Hollywood and Disney in the recent past.

The Sherman Brothers are now both in their 80s. The older brother, Bob Sherman, has lived in London, England since the death of his wife; younger brother Dick still lives in Los Angeles.

The documentary covers 80 years of their lives, from a happy childhood right through to the present day, covering their personal and professional lives and offering a glimpse of their particular creative process. The movie features their family, friends and colleagues, and includes interviews with such musicians, actors and filmmakers as Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, Randy Newman, Ben Stiller, John Landis, Barbara Broccoli, Lesley Ann Warren, John Williams, Debbie Reynolds, Hayley Mills and Angela Lansbury, among many others.

The centre of the movie concerns the brothers' very different personalities, their opposite creative styles and the incidents that slowly drove them apart -- although some of those, like friction between their wives, are sort of glossed over.

Bob is depicted as a dark thinker; Dick is viewed as the happy-go-lucky type. Too bad the movie doesn't dig deeper, because it just starts to get really interesting and then it's over.

On the other hand, the filmmakers do not manufacture any Disney-like ending for their movie.

Or their fathers.

Richard and Robert Sherman wrote songs for such movies as Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Aristocats, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Tom Sawyer, The Jungle Book, The Parent Trap, Charlotte's Web, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Snoopy Come Home. And with Mary Poppins now on stage, the brothers are still very much a part of the game.

(This film is rated G)

More Movie Reviews