Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Another film I don’t think I’d seen all the way through, and in this case it’s because it’s alarmingly long especially for a kid’s film.

There’s a sort of 50/50 split in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang between weird tedious shit that shouldn’t have made the cut (er, chu-chi face?), and genuinely charming and memorable scenes.

As a car weirdo I quite like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (especially the cool teak work) and it’s interesting to read that it was produced as a real road-going car with a valid UK registration number, ‘GEN11’. It’s a Ford Essex V6 inside with an auto box, so Caractacus Potts must have been an avid resto-modder given that the broken down race car version was a chain-driven old speedster.

Ultimately I found the story-within-a-story structure quite frustrating, and by the last hour you want it to end because there’s too much 60s wackiness. I’d guess it’s there so help us understand that Mr. Potts is hurting under the surface, a single parent struggling and using stories as a coping mechanism. But that never gets fully explored as a theme, even though he does acknowledge that his kids need a mother.

It’s easy to moan about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang but give it a day or two and all you remember is the good stuff. Benny Hill. The inventions. The songs. The car. The dance numbers. It’s a technicolor fever dream that seems better in restrospect than in the moment.