Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) – A scrapyard race car and a bumbling inventor find new life in the belief of two children. Along with a beautiful young woman, they end up on a fantasy adventure together.
Directed by Ken Hughes
Starring Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Lionel Jeffries, Benny Hill
Why I Liked It – It’s everything it tries to be, silly, funny fantasy.
There is a danger in returning to our loves from childhood. Sometimes they don’t age well. Sometimes we don’t. I see too many adults looking at movies aimed at children and then judging them using adult movie “standards”. Often, the movies “come up short”, while I would suggest it’s the reviewer who has fallen short of the mark. “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” is not only a children’s story; it comes from a more innocent time. If you’re expecting the standard “wink-wink, the kids won’t get this but their parents will” stuff that is standard in modern kids’ movies, expect disappointment. This is just silly fun.
The movie faced many unusual challenges right from the start. There’s the whole James Bond connection right off the bat. The producer was Albert Broccoli, the long-time producer of the James Bond movies. This is the only non-Bond he ever made after beginning the 007 movies. It’s based on the book of the same name by Ian Fleming. The director Ken Hughes, who directed a Bond movie. Roald Dahl, who had written a Bond script that showed no particular fealty to the original book (You Only Live Twice), wrote the script. He did the same thing here. Two actors from the early Bond movies appear here: Desmond Llewellyn (Q) and Gert Fröbe (Auric Goldfinger). Heck, Broccoli offered Dick Van Dyke the role of James Bond! The actor told his producer to check his English accent in “Mary Poppins,” and Broccoli changed his mind! Hardly the perfect mix for a movie for children.
Add to it the fact that director Ken Hughes had never done a movie like this and had never directed children. And didn’t enjoy either experience, apparently.
Amazingly, the movie shrugs most of those challenges off and sets a lightweight, fantastical tone from beginning to end. Van Dyke is his usual warm, charming self, playing Mr. Potts, the widower father of two cute, chirpy children. They fall in love with the battered hulk of a once successful race car, and then meet the improbably named Truly Scrumptious (possibly another nod to the Bond movies and played by Howes) who becomes the love interest for their father. Potts’ father, the slightly delusional but funny Grandpa Potts (Jeffries) sets the tone for the off-beat family. They go their own way and do their own thing. What grows out of that is a fantasy story about the magical powers of the restored car and the terrible people it must defeat.
The visuals are wonderful, the cast is solid, the music is good enough (more on that in a moment), and, if you’re willing to sit back and enjoy the fun, the movie is entertaining throughout. The movie includes one of the creepiest kids’ movie villains of all time in the Child Catcher, played to perfection by Robert Helpman. He was so frightening he had to reassure his youthful co-stars that it was just an act.
I have only two caveats here. It’s a bit long. At the time, the two-hour and twenty-four minute run time was the longest children’s movie ever. I didn’t find it unbearable, but a few quick edits would solve that problem without hurting the movie.
Where would I edit? That would be in the soundtrack. Other than the title tune, there’s not much in the way of a “parking lot song” (a song you’re still singing after the show is over and you’re in the parking lot). The songwriters were the legendary Sherman brothers in their first non-Disney movie. There wasn’t much that grabbed me here, and you could almost pick songs at random to eliminate and not hurt the movie much at all.
If you’re looking for some old-fashioned family fun, particularly for the youngest members, this is a great choice. And as long as you have aged too badly, you’ll enjoy it too.
Rating – **** Recommended
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