Thursday, June 1, 2017

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - Movie Review

Take a story written by Ina Fleming (of the James Bond fame). Add Roald Dahl to adapt it to the movie. Get Broccoli (of James Bond fame) to produce it. And you have a crazy, fun movie of a magical car and a love story. 1968 vintage.

Rich Truly Scrumptious (name of heroine) belongs to the Scrumptious chocolate family. She bumps into the two kids of an eccentric scientist Potts, single, fully focused on his inventions, and living with his even more eccentric Dad who worked in India in his youth. The two kids want their father to buy an old car, junked now, but a champion in its day. The Dad, though poor, somehow buys the car and then, on a day at the beach, starts a fantasy story where the car behaves in every way like a Bond car - flying in the air, going across water. The scientist finds one practical application among his many inventions, chocolates that have holes in them, and thereby, blow whistles. Though rejected earlier, the Scrumptious company buys them - not for humans but for dogs - thus making Potts a rich man. Truly and Potts (the potty scientist) fall in love and hopefully marry.

A muscial with many songs but the title number is catchy and racy. Good fun kids movie. The kind we'd dress up and run off to Sangeet or Tivoli to watch.

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