People..please, no more telling me I misunderstood the Football Factory, if one more person even thi...
People..please, no more telling me I misunderstood the Football Factory, if one more person even thinks about saying it..I'm 32, I've got GCSE's in pottery..I understand sh*t British films just fine <flounces off in flurry of petticoats>
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As another blustery bank holiday weekend scrapes by, so out come all the usual suspects, thrust upon us by unmerciful television executives with little regard for value for money in the licence fee stakes.
1968's 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' was adapted for the screen by Roald Dahl, he who had already mangled Ian Fleming's work with the film adaptation of 'You Only Live Twice'. The book was Flemings only literary departure from Bond, and while Bond took to the big screen with little difficulty, 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' is one big unwieldy mess of a picture.
Receiving lukewarm to damning reviews on it's original release, and subsequently trotted out on television every single holiday, it's been given a unwelcomed new lease of life by some darned stage musical. Now heralded as some kind of wonder, it's received 4 DVD releases in the space of 2 years, and is being shoved in our faces as something as magical as its obvious idol, 'Mary Poppins'.
'Chitty...' is far from magical, and even as a child I recall wilting under it's colossal running time. 144 minutes would have been fine and dandy for one of director Ken Hughes' historical romps, but as a piece of childrens entertainment it grinds on and on, grating like all the histrionics of Gert Frobe and his associates.
The film
tells the story of the story of Caractacus Potts, an inventor with a bottomless pit of ideas but with a startling lack of funds. Penniless and father to 2 children, keeper of his own adventurer father, and of a rambling farmhouse, he is constantly seeking the 'big one'. The invention that will make him rich. Finally getting his hands on some money after his intervention in a circus act, he buys a clapped-out rustbucket of a car and secrets himself away in his workshop. After much hammering and welding he unveils his wonder vehicle to the astonishment of his children, and scepticism of his father.
Heading off on a picnic, he runs (almost literally) into Miss Scrumptious, and his children invite her to accompany them to the beach. Also on their tail are despicable spies, eager to get their hands on Potts' inventions.
Their ensuing adventures take them to a land where children are banned and where a tyrranical leader hordes toys, inventors, and Pott's father.
Sounds a hoot right? Not under the unsure hand of Hughes it isn't. Reeling from sickly sentiment to slapdash slapstick to the occasional chill and spill, 'Chitty' plots an unsteady path through it's two hour plus running length. The script so wants to be Disney but instead is plain dismal, lacking charm or warmth, the characters are merely pegs on which to hang limp songs. Oh yes, beware, it's a musical.
Of the umpteen songs, penned by Disney regulars The Sherman Brothers, only two stand out as vaguely tuneful and memorable. The title song is pleasant enough, and 'The Old Bamboo' is rattled out in great spirit. Dick Van Dyke thankfully refrains from adopting an English accent in this English set story, and indeed comes across as a loveable and engaging lead. His professionalism shines through in the song and dance numbers, and the highlight for me remains the 'Bamboo' skit, which is a triumph of choreography and set amidst some great production design; a very colourful and flavourful travelling fairground.
The rest of the cast? Well, there are plenty of familiar faces, all given too little or too much of inconsequence to do. Lionel Jeffries gets to ham it up as Pott's father, despite being younger than Van Dyke, and Robert Helpmann still causes shudders as the Childcatcher. Gert Frobe annoys greatly as the leader of the fictional state of Vulgaria, and trots out the performance last seen in 'Those Magnificent Men..' and soon to be seen again in 'Monte Carlo or Bust'. Stanley Unwin is criminally underused, while Benny Hill is queasily cast as a kindly toymaker and protector of children.
Sally Anne Howes does her best Julie Andrews routine as the improbably named 'Truly Scrumptious', but fails to make any lasting impression, and as for the juvenile leads...please make them stop. Heather Ripley and Adrian Hall do an awful lot of cute smiling and excited shrieking. I do so wish they wouldn't.
Other than the unsure tone, meandering and contrived storyline, and mixed bag of performances, the most criminal act committed by the film is to make it all look so flat and lifeless. Lest us not forget, this film was assembled almost entirely by the same crews responsible for the Bond franchise, from producers Saltzman and Broccoli, right through to designer Ken Adam. 'Chitty' though lacks sparkle. It hops about the globe, visits some great locations and is set amongst some wonderful design work by Adam, but it just limps lukewarmly along. This is not what I expected or demanded as a child, and as an adult who is still charmed by the likes of 'Mary Poppins' it's not what I expect now.
So, saddled with all of the above, and awful special effects (even for 1968 - the year of a Space Odyssey) to boot, 'Chitty' is a colossal bore. Shot in a wide scope ratio, it looks lost, with plenty of unused frame. The DVD restoration does little to enhance the look of the film, and the sound clean-up fails to enliven the musical numbers.
The DVD is available in a pan and scan version, a widescreen presentation, and as a double disc set featuring the soundtrack and widescreen print. The extras would have been the point of interest had they not been so, well, uninteresting. A handful of vintage featurettes, a couple of contemporary and equally brief features, Dick Van Dyke talking about the film like it were 'Ben Hur' and an option to sing-a-long to the film. I would choose to snore-a-long.
The cinema-going public of 1968 voted with its feet, and the film failed to recoup it's sizeable production fee. I worry if we are treating this kind of rubbish as sacred now. I fail to see where the enjoyment lies for children, and urge any potential buyers to treat their children with a little more respect, they'll be clever enough to see through this shambles in an instant.
Expect to pay from £14.99 through to £24.99 for the hyperbolic Collectors Special Edition.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Music / Performing Arts, Comedy - Director: Trevor Nunn, Geoffrey Posner - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, Parental Guidance - Starring: Duncan Preston, Celia Imrie, Julie Walters, Victoria Wood, Jim Broadbent
Everything Caractacus Potts invents goes wrong - even his sweets are full of holes. So how ... more
can he have created a car that not only drives but floats and flies as well? Find out as the fantasmagorical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang takes your family on a magi...
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May 3rd, 2004
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