| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) |
| Director | Ken Hughes |
| Writers | Roald Dahl, Ken Hughes, based on the novel by Ian Fleming |
| Lead Cast | Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Lionel Jeffries |
| Supporting Cast | Benny Hill, Anna Quayle, Heather Ripley, Adrian Hall, Gert Fröbe, Robert Helpmann |
| Genre | Family, Fantasy, Musical, Adventure |
| Release Date | December 18, 1968 (USA) |
| Duration | 144 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | ~$10 million |
| Box Office | ~$7.5 million (USA), though later became a beloved classic worldwide |
| IMDb Rating | 6.9/10 |
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Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) is a lovable crackpot inventor who lives in a windmill in Edwardian England, with his two small children and eccentric father. Few of his inventions work, and the best isn’t even the result of his tinkering it’s a magical, burned out racecar that Potts rescued from the dump and restored using parts from a boat and fireplace. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the name they give it, and in this car Potts and the kids tour the countryside with his love interest (Sally Ann Howes) which is odd, because nothing makes kids go ick faster than that.
As they picnic by the seashore, Potts invents a fantastic story about pirates and spies and a German castle in faraway Vulgaria (in reality, Bavaria’s famed Neuschwanstein Castle, inspiration for the one at Walt Disney World). In this fantasy, Grandpa (Lionel Jeffries is mistaken for the inventor and kidnapped. While the gang tries to rescue him in this anti kid country, the children are taken by the child catcher. With the help of the local toymaker (Benny Hill, all’s well that ends well though, at almost two and a half hours, the film doesn’t end soon enough.
With Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, MGM hoped to capture some Mary Poppins (1964) Disney magic. They hired Poppins star Van Dyke and a Julie Andrews clone (Howes), and even brought Dick and Bob Sherman onboard, the songwriters who snagged an Oscar for their Mary Poppins work. But the result comes closer to Babes in Toyland, an over the top musical with forgettable tunes (apart from the title song) and a live action cast so cartoon like that only small children will find it amusing.
That the movie disappoints is also strange given the James Bond connection (one which is all but ignored on the extras). Based on a book by Bond creator Ian Fleming (the only children’s book he wrote), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is produced by Bond film godfather Albert R. Broccoli, and the comic, singing villain, Baron Bomburst, the tyrannical ruler of Vulgaria, is played by none other than Goldfinger (Gert Frobe).
But perhaps the biggest surprise is that screenwriter Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach) turns a book plot involving real gangsters and robbers into a daydream sequence of pure movie fantasy involving Chaplinesque German spies. Had Dahl opted to stay more faithful to the book, the plot would have come closer to another car fantasy that premiered the same year Disney’s The Love Bug.
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