Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Thoughts

It’s been decades since I Iast watched this film so, in a nostalgic mood, I watched it again recently. So many problems… I’ve always had mixed feelings about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the 1968 fantasy-musical film, improbably made by the folks who made James Bond films. Perhaps not that improbably, since Ian Fleming created the both iconic spy and the titular car of the children’s adventure story, Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car. And both feature capers and gadget-enabled cars. Fleming didn’t live the see publication of his book, let alone the movie. Presumably he would not have objected too much to the changes, since he’d seen how his Bond novels were changed for movies, but I suspect much of my dislike of the movie comes from having read the rather different book first. The movie producers, aiming to duplicate the success of Mary Poppins, hired the same male lead, Dick Van Dyke, by offering more and more money until he accepted. They attempted to hire the same female lead…