Pluskylang Great Film overall

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

TerryTolkin An eccentric Victorian single-father turns a broken-down Grand Prix enters a local competition to build race car. Since he's actually an Inventor he includes a few 'options 'in the design. One day he takes his children and their friend for an outing but it turn into a magical fantasy adventure to save their grandfather in a far-off land! !Looks Great on Acid!

JohnHowardReid Copyright 17 December 1968 by Warfield Productions—Dramatic Features. Released through United Artists Pictures. New York opening at Loew's State 2: 18 December 1968. U.S. release: 18 December 1968. U.K. release: 28 December 1969. Australian release: 19 December 1968. Sydney opening at the Paris. 145 minutes.SYNOPSIS: An unsuccessful inventor weaves a story about an old car that he has made over into a shiny new contraption.NOTES: The title song was nominated for an Academy Award, losing to "The Windmills of Your Mind" from "The Thomas Crown Affair"."Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" took more money in Great Britain in 1969 than any other movie except "Oliver" and a re-issue of "Gone With The Wind". In the U.S.A., "Chitty" achieved 12th position for 1969.COMMENT: We keep waiting for the big musical production number involving all the Vulgarians which will climax the whole thing, but curiously there isn't one. Maybe just as well since Gert Frobe gives such a flat-footed performance, mistiming even such mildly amusing lines as "Never mind, I get her next time". Even in his comedy duet, he seems to be a beat behind his partner. The two spies similarly mangle their opportunities. They are dud hams. A pity two more interesting people weren't cast. Benny Hill has a small role complete with accent which he plays virtually straight, but Helpmann makes the most of his couple of scenes as the child catcher. Dick Van Dyke is his usual pseudo-engaging self — an energetic dancer, a fair vocalizer but a somewhat blandly nauseating personality. We keep waiting for Justice to come back. Sally Ann Howes is a pleasant singer but a cloying person and the kids are two spoiled, self- centered brats. Lionel Jeffries tends to overdo his part, especially in the early stages, but comes into his own with "P=O=S=H" and thereafter. The film is very uneven. It takes forever to get off the ground, but improves once we get to the JRJ scenes and Adam's splendid sets and the two great musical production numbers in the sweet factory and the delightful Bamboo dance at the fair. It's a pity the rest of the film is something of an anticlimax. In fact it's a different story altogether as the script itself acknowledges!

mark.waltz There's so much to attack but so much to love (begrugingly) in this movie version of Ian Fleming's novel. Yes, indeed, the author of the Bond series wrote a musical about a magical car that floats, flies and bang bang bangs. It's also a lifesaver for the eccentric inventor Cattaragus Potts (Dick Van Dyke), his two precocious children (Adrian Hall and Heather Ripley), and a beautiful socialite (Sally Anne Howes) who is at the crossroads of her life and determined to get past the pretensions of being the daughter of a wealthy sweets manufacturer, Lord Scrumptious (a wonderfully imperious James Robertson Justice) who has nothing but her money to claim as her own. The widowed Potts and the lovely Truly don't hit it off at first (like many couples paired together in a movie musical), but her instant love for his children draws them closer, as does an adventure where they head off to a weird land of child-hating rulers and underground canyons where everybody under the age of 18 lives in fear.The Sherman Brothers achieve another hit in their musical catalog with the musical score, an obvious follow-up to "Mary Poppins", yet not released by Walt Disney. Van Dyke is the obvious choice for Potts, and with Julie Andrews unable to take on the role of the heroine, British musical diva Sally Anne Howes had her one American film role as Truly. "Lovely, Lonely Man" shows her as a gorgeous soprano, and it is sad for American audiences that she didn't get the chance to be seen in more films. Only some lucky audiences on Broadway got the chance to see her, mainly as a replacement in "My Fair Lady" for Andrews on Broadway.Hall and Ripley are delightful as the children, looking more real than the kids from "Mary Poppins" and delightfully coy in their attitudes towards life. Lionel Jeffries gives a glorious performance as their flustered grandfather, an eccentric world traveler who pretends to go around the world in his little shack which really appears to be an out-house. There's gloriously campy performances from Gert Frobe and Anna Quayle as the Baron and Baroness Bomburst who perform "Choochy Face" with the attitudes of teenagers in a seemingly perfect lovefest, but its obvious that the Baron can't stand her, leading to some hilarious innuendos of him obviously trying to snuff her out. "Choochy Face" is followed up by the hysterical visual of the dried-up court of prunes who surround them socially, giving this a cartoon feel in its live action presentation.Then, there's Robert Helpmann as the sinister looking Child Catcher, one of the most horrifying villains ever on screen, and one who probably gave a lot of children nightmares. He actually looks like he could be a distant relative of the Wicked Witch of the West, an escapee from Oz who was obviously banished by the little people who lived in that land. Even "Willy Wonka" with its darkness didn't have a character like this. Musically and choreographically, "Chitty" is phenomenal with several lavish production numbers, some extremely touching moments, and a fantasy element that is almost as magical as "The Wizard of Oz". A Broadway version proved to be even more elephantine than the movie, overly cute and missing the adult touches that made the movie as appealing to grown-ups as it was to children.

berberian00-276-69085 I dedicate this piece of writing to Ian Fleming (1908-1964), the ingenious creator of 007 James Bond and also to all those defectors from the East that made the world beautiful today - cf., "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (1968). Since I don't want to miss an opportunity with each of 23 individual Movies from the Bond's series, I decided to place my reference for Ian Fleming in the paragraph with his less popular hero Caractacus Potts and his flying automobile. So putting it bluntly "Hollywood can no longer make movies like that because they no longer know how ... (cited from another reviewer). True or false, Movies for Children with fantastic element in it hadn't been so many in circulation for the mentioned period in the 1960s and 1970s (when I was a growing kid) - here I could point out "Wonderful World of Brothers Grimm" (1962), "Mary Poppins" (1964), "Doctor Dolittle" (1967), "Pippi Longstocking" (1969) with sequels, and maybe some other that I don't remember.Opinion research on Ian Fleming and his hero James Bond is something else. Fleming, who worked for Reuters as journalist, was recruited by British Foreign Service to do some coverage for espionage trials - particularly, when after 1947 it became highly popular for government officials from the Eastern Bloc to desert West with some classified information. In the country where I live, Bulgaria, "show trials" were made for Traicho Kostov and Nikola Petkov both sentenced to death. This was the beginning of Cold War, per se. Leakage happened from West-to-East also, when Rosenberg family divulged secret for A-bomb to the Russians. The World was never going to be same as before. Conventional war started and Combat battle on front-line was history. Can you believe this, some 3000 years after the Trojan War!Now get on grounds and pay tribute to Ian Fleming, the Colossus of espionage novel. He didn't have pretensions to have invented sullenly his hero James Bond. In fact, the 14 novels that were written for Agent 007 (i.e., "license to kill in the line of duty") took Fleming only 10 years and ruined respectively his health. He was heavy drinker and smoker; he died age 56. That was not bad age to die after making millions and also the phenomenon "compression of mortality" was not yet known.I want to complement at end few words on the prototype Spy that Fleming used for his novels. Firstly comes Sidney Reilly (1873-1925) - viz., a notorious adventurer (born as Solomon Rosenblum) in tsarist Russia, who worked for London at least 20 years before executed by the Bolsheviks. The second prototype Spy whom I didn't see mentioned is Oleg Penkovsky (1919-1963). Fleming shouldn't have missed his dossier if he was involved with Foreign Service coverage. Oleg Penkovsky, a colonel with Soviet Military Intelligence, defected to London in the 1950s. He and his contact person Greville Wynne (from MI5) were caught in 1963 and put to trial, where Penkovsky was sentenced to death and Greville Wynne to 8 years in prison (as foreign subject, he was released in 1965 for exchange to another double agent Sgt. Jack Dunlap, an American who spied for U.S.S.R.) Whatever, it is evident from "Penkovskiy Papers: The Russian Who Spied for the West, New York, 1966" that he leaked top secret for at least 5 years before dying. So, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy could be traced directly to this defective line. Thank you!