On the “Old Bamboo” :
Yeah, but Van Dyke has to get in his [del]Pole Dancing[/del] acrobatics. I mean, he has a nearly similar scene in Mary Poppins. Wasn’t their a third movie he did the routine in? [Bedknobs and Broomsticks doesn’t show up for Van Dyke. Thought he did it in that one too.]
I have never seen that video before… but now I’m kinda glad I did.
That seemed a common feature of musicals back them - suddenly everyone is singing and dancing about, trilling rhymes about grocery shopping or shining one’s shoes or some other innocuous thing.
Hey, I like to see men flinging themselves about in dances - that’s why I still like to watch old Fred Astaire routines.
At least Me Ol’ Bamboo made some sense, in that Caractacus had to come up with the money to buy the old car.
Oh, sure, like they were on his ass about his kids not going to school, right?
D’oh - you’re right of course; I don’t know why I made that mistake.
Back on topic - the last time I saw the movie I was startled at how long it takes before the “main plot” starts - we get the lengthy intro about history of Chitty, Caracticus’s business schemes and inventions, his encounter with Truly, with Truly’s father, etc. all before the flying car stuff.
P.S. Speaking of Bond connections, the fellow who played the Duke was also Blofeld in one of the Bond flicks.
Truly Scrumptious is NOT a character from the book. In the book, the Potts are a happily married husband and wife - none of this ‘single father’ junk added for no discernable reason.
I Agree 100% with AHunter3 - loved, LOVED the book; read my hardback copy to death. I absolutely HATE the movie. The book reads like a book you’d expect from Ian Fleming - gangsters, spies, secret lairs (caves), explosions, and daring rescues. The movie is utter Disneyesque (even if Disney didn’t make it) crap.
What I remember most from the book: Gelignite!
I’m not a big fan of ***Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ***the movie. It just took waaaay too long to get going, for my taste.
But you’ll note that, while almost everybody else in the film is English, Dick van Dyke never tries to do his standard, godawful Cockney accent. I think everyone else had seen him in*** Mary Poppins***, and told him, “Dick- please, do NOT try to sound English. Whatever you do, do NOT even think about doing your bogus English accent, or we’ll have to kill you.”
There are 2 things I love from that movie above all else: The music box scene already mentioned and when Dick Van Dyke sings “Hushabye Mountain” - I loved that song.
I know the movie is awful - I recently made my bf watch it with me when I discovered my mom had a copy in her archives now - and the plot is crazy. But it’s the individual nuggets that I loved as a child and still enjoy today.
Hmm… I see my local library has a copy of the book. Now I feel compelled to read it.
Wouldn’t surprise me if I wind up liking the book better, too - but while the movie as a whole is mediocre there are certain tibdits that I like in isolation.
It was a magic car - at the close of the film it didn’t even need the wings to fly! Did you see the license plate? GEN 11 - “Genie”. It’s a freaking magic car, it can ignore physics.
Hey, when I was 4 it was all perfectly believable. I think that’s why it’s a kids’s movie.
If I recall, Broccoli took significant liberties in making the James Bond novels into films as well, which might be the true origin of “Truly Scrumptious”, not Fleming.
I’m gonna have to break out my copy for another viewing. I thought that number only accidentally had him in it because he was fleeing from the scene of the haircut machine fiasco, and he used that as his way of “disappearing into the crowd.”
I loved that film as a kid, and my ideal job was the childcatcher! Sadly I never got my dream job, but I still have a copy of the film to watch.
This will be totally random reminisces. Loved the film when I was a kid because I was into aircraft of any kind plus it had cool evil looking airships. It used to be on TV regularly when I was growing up the 70s. A few things always bothered me, one was when they first take chitty out for a ride the road is far too narrow for another vehicle or wagon to pass and it is also more of a ditch so I can’t see how you could turn off. The train they pass has no fuel tender so it could not have been going very far. I loved the hair cutting machine it gives everybody a hair-do like Bert.
I had a very serious crush on Truly because after all she was Truly, Truly Scrumptious.
Injustice, sexism alert! Dick Van Dyke britches Truly out for being a woman driver but he did not have his eyes on the road when the “accident” occurred! He was too busy singing.
My mother remembered the movie fondly, so she picked up a copy to share with my boys (2 and 5). They love almost all of it. There’s a slow part in the middle that loses them. They love the child catcher, even though he scares them.
I can’t make it through the movie at all. I do something else while they watch it.
That’s correct on one level - how he came to be in the show was accidental - but for purposes of inclusion in the plot there had to be some way for him to acquire 30 shillings (or whatever the amount was) to buy the car. It’s not like he made a sudden side trip to Tupelo, Mississippi for no explicable reason or something. Or had a bag of money fall out of the sky onto his head.
On another level, it’s just an excuse for gratuitous singing and dancing.
British conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife, both of whom died at a Swiss assisted-suicide clinic last year, had a son and a daughter named Caractacus and Boudicca. Link.
“The ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus were just passing by …”
It appears that Icerigger and I have (or had) the same taste in women.
I was totally in love with Truly Scrumptious.
The actor who played her, Sally Ann Howes, held up quite well over the years.
Image of the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang main actors
Hah! Yes, indeed. Also, at getting on for 2 1/2 hours, the film’s quite an epic for a kiddy flick. When I saw it in the theatre, there was an intermission just when the car went over the cliff.
In my VHS copy there’s an “Intermission” as well - of course, it doesn’t really stop the film, but the sign is up for several minutes.
It’s the accent!
BTW I still have my CCBB puzzle from my youth.
