The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story (2009)

I was amazed by how many of the songs that are part and parcel of my youth were created by Richard and Robert Sherman. Each time this documentary would play a snippet of one of them, my heart would start singing right along and my memories would zoom to a rainy day on a scratchy couch in front of a small TV housed in a gigantic wooden floor console or to a sweaty night sitting on the top rack of our station wagon at the drive-in.

They were an incredible and prolific songwriting team but they just weren't close. This is no great shock as Robert is a serious, quiet man who was injured during World War II while just a teen and is still haunted by what he saw at Dachau, while Richard is garrulous to the point of interruptive rudeness and seems to have led a relatively charmed, easy life. Other than music, these two have very little in common. It's true that they seemed to take their distance to unnecessary extremes -- their children, though living just blocks away from each other, weren't allowed to spend time together -- but I've never thought "family" should dictate a forced togetherness, so I may have been less bothered by their distance than the filmmakers (cousins and sons of the brothers) wanted me to be.

In short, I was fascinated by the process of getting the music out and enjoyed the time capsule of show business. I was much less interested in the family drama and the hoped-for catharsis that drove the cousin filmmakers to create this documentary.

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