Review #804: 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' (1968)

To audiences young and old who grew up watching it, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang surely holds a warm, nostalgic place in their hearts. At the age of 29, this was my first viewing. I somehow knew all of the songs, knew everything that happens in the plot, and was certainly familiar with the notoriously creepy Child Catcher (Robert Helpmann). For me, watching the film was like eating a huge slice of cake. The first few bites are delicious and barely touch the sides, mid-way through you start to waver but you just can't seem to stop, but by the end your stomach is turning and you wish you'd never eaten the damn thing.

The brain-child of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, the movie was only loosely adapted from his novel by children's author Roald Dahl and director Ken Hughes. Chocked full of sweets and machinery, most of the film will have children eating out of it's sugar-coated palm. When skipping school one day, two mop-headed children come across Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes), a pretty but strict lady who takes the children straight to their father to report their truancy. The father, eccentric inventor Caractacus Potts (Dick van Dyke), supports their free-spiritedness, much to the horror of Truly.

While observing Potts' warehouse of barmy inventions, Truly comes across a sweet that can play like a flute. They takes it to Truly's father, Lord Scrumptious (James Robertson Justice), a successful confectionery manufacturer, who eventually throws Potts out when the place is overrun by dogs responding to the flute sweet. Eventually he saves up enough money to buy an old banger loved by his children and manages to fix it up, dubbing it 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' due to the clunking noise it makes. While off on a picnic one day, Potts and Truly start to fall for each other, and Potts tells his children the story of an evil pirate baron (Gert Frobe) who wants to steal the car for himself.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is carried along by some gorgeous Technicolor cinematography by Christopher Challis and an energetic performance from van Dyke, who puts in a highly physical one-man show and remains effortlessly likeable throughout. At two and a half hours, the film far outstays it's welcome. The majority of the songs are wonderful, but the film is slowed by mushy scenes, drab love songs and unnecessary sub-plots. It struggles with settling on a tone and ends up becomes a bloated mash-up. The first half of the movie I enjoyed as much as I did with the great's of the genre, until Grandpa Potts (the magnificent Lionel Jeffries) is whisked off to Vulgaria and it all becomes increasingly sickly.


Directed by: Ken Hughes
Starring: Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Lionel Jeffries, Gert Fröbe, Anna Quayle, Benny Hill, James Robertson Justice, Robert Helpmann
Country: UK

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie