Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a movie by Ken Hughes, based on the novel by Ian Fleming. It was written by Roald Dahl and stars Dick van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Lionel Jeffries, Gert Fröbe, Heather Ripley and Adrian Hall.

Plot:
Jemima (Heather Ripley) and Jeremy (Adrian Hall) fall in love with a car that is about to be wrecked. So they ask their father, inventor Caractacus (Dick van Dyke) to buy it for them. He actually succeeds in putting the money together and actually repairing the car. Together, they and Truly (Sally Ann Howes), who gets pulled into their lives by accident go for a picnic. But that’s just the beginning of the adventure.

They showed the movie in the cinema on Christmas Eve and since my sister asked me to babysit my nephew for the day, I had the perfect excuse to go and see it again. Unfortunately it doesn’t stand the test of time quite as well as it should have.

It’s always difficult to rewatch a childhood favorite that you haven’t seen in such a long time. You forget a lot of things, some things get changed by time and memory and every little thing that’s different from what you remember seems to sting a little bit.

With Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, it was like that. I remembered the first half of the film very clearly and the second half of it was quite fuzzy and almost entirely gone in my head. Which is probably the reason why the movie felt so awfully long. [I have the theory that as kids we didn’t finish watching the movie most of the time because it got too long.] I mean, it’s two and a half hours long, which is a freaking eternity for a kids’ movie – and I felt every minute of it. [Curiously enough, my 4 year old nephew didn’t have any problems with staying calm during the entire length of the film. My attention span worries me.]

But apart from the length (which I maybe wouldn’t have felt that much if I hadn’t been so freaking tired before Christmas), the movie was awesome. Dick van Dyke is wonderful, the music is great, the Child Catcher (Robert Helpmann) is perfectly creepy and there is just so much craziness (the cooking machine! the grandfather!) to keep you busy for quite a while.

And the special effects are surprisingly good. I mean, compared to today’s standards, it looks antiquated, but it doesn’t look bad. Generally the movie is pure visual delight, in costumes and set design as much as in cinematography.

Summarising: you definitely should have seen it at least once.