Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a 1971 Disney children’s musical film based on the the series of books by author Mary Norton. Though the film hasn’t been released on Blu-ray (as of 30 June 2013), so I thought I’d review the iTunes HD version.
An animated interlude.
The story is often compared with Mary Poppins, as it features both musical and animated interludes and have children who have been left in the care of a magical stranger. In fact one of the musical numbers, “Beautiful Briny Sea”, was originally written for Mary Poppins.
In fact while Disney was negotiating the rights to Mary Poppins they were lining up the rights to Bedknobs and Broomsticks as a fallback.