Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Another movie that I recorded some months back is coming up on TCM today: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, at 5:15 PM. So I made a point of watching it to do a post on it here.

Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) is a widower inventer in circa-1910 England who has a past as a racecar driver. But his car suffered a fiery accident and is now junk, so he's been reduced to various inventions, none of which work, while trying to raise his two children Jemima (Heather Ripley) and Jeremy (Adrian Hall) and living with a grandfather (Lionel Jeffries) who in the present day would probably be considered to have dementia.

One of Potts' inventions that has failed is a type of candy that unfortunately has holes in it, from the sugar being boiled to the wrong temperature, as Truly (Sally Ann Howes) tells him. She's a woman rich enough to have a car of her own and drive it, she having picked up the kids from the junk dealer since they were supposed to be in school. In any case, it's clear that Truly and Caractacus start off on the wrong foot.

On the bright side, it turns out that the candy does have some use to it. All those holes mean tht it can be used as a flute, making it a novelty candy. Potts goes to see the local candy manufacturer, Lord Scrumptious (James Robertson Justice) about selling the rights to manufacture the candy to him, which would bring in some royalties to the Potts family. It's here that we learn that Truly is in fact Truly Scrumptious, daughter of Lord Scrumptious, which would explain why she knows about candy.

Potts gets the money to buy back his racecar from the junkyard, tinkering with it and actually getting it to run, so he takes it down to the beach for a picnic with his two kids. Truly has shown up there as well, and the kids like her, not having a mother of their own. They invite her to picnic with them, and eventually Dad starts telling the kids a story about the ship that's just offshore.

The story is that the ship is a pirate ship sent by the head of Vulgaria, Baron Bomburst (Gert Fröbe). He's learned about Potts' car which is a magical car that has the power to float and fly, and he'd like that car for himself. So he sends of spies to get the car. They're bumbling, so they accidentally capture Grandpa instead, forcing Caractacus, Truly, and the kids to fly over in the car, named "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", to Vulgaria to rescue Grandpa.

Meanwhile, the Baron's wife (Anna Quayle), hates children, so she's outlawed them and all of the children are in hiding, which is why the villagers are horrified when Jemima and Jeremy show up. A toymaker (Benny Hill) hides them, and eventually helps Potts and Truly rescue all of the kids.

When Ben Mankiewicz presented this one back in July, he quoted a critic from, I think, Time magazine who wrote that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was "a movie for the ages... the ages between 5 and 12" and went on to savage the movie. I'd have to say that it's easy to see why a critic would write something like that. The movie runs way too long for a story like this, at 147 minutes. Albert Broccoli, who had been producing the James Bond movies, brought in the Sherman brothers from Disney to write songs for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and if you don't care much for Disney music, you're going to hate the musical numbers here. Unfortunately, I'm one of those people who doesn't care much for the Sherman brothers songs, which repeatedly bring the movie to a screeching halt.

Worse, what's supposed to be the fun part of the story, when Dad starts telling the kids about Vulgaria and the movie turns to fantasy, doesn't come until over an hour into the proceedings. I understand the need for a set-up to introduce Dad and Truly, but there's also a long scene at a carnival that could have been excised, along with one or more of the musical numbers.

Still, if you've got young kids, they may enjoy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And then irritate you for weeks with the songs.