It's fifty years-old this year and it still hit the mark. I watched this with my eldest son when he was about 6 and he loved it. But, I just forgot about it as time went by. He's 14 now. I put it on last night for my other two kids, who are 10 & 5, well they loved it. Watched it again the very next day. My teenage son even sat in and watched it too. They sing the theme song now while driving. The only bad point to me is that it's a very long movie and it can seem a little slow at times. Probably not a bad thing to a kid though, mine never complained. They asked questions about "the olden days" as it's onviously set even many years before it was made. I loved the questions and the insight into a different time of story telling. He movie was at least 25 years old when I saw it and it seemed old to me then. But I loved it. Great movie. Don't be turned off thinking kids won't like it compared to modern kid and family movies. It's dated but that's not a bad thing.

If a movie could be comfort food, this is it. It's delightful and beautiful to look at, it's funny, it has Dick Van Dyke, laughs, lots of eccentric characters, and a Sherman brothers (aka Walt Disney) soundtrack. They don't make 'em like this anymore, but they certainly made of lot of these in the 1960's.From an Ian Fleming (James Bond) novel with a screenplay treatment from Roald Dahl (Willy Wonka) and director Ken Hughes, it's a marvelous musical adventure, kids movie, 'love' story with "good guys" and comical "bad guys" (including Goldfinger Gert Fröbe) that runs a tad long with its 15+ songs, several of which are reprised including the Academy Award nominated title song.Besides the indomitable Van Dyke as a "Rube Goldberg" inventor Caractacus Potts, there are so many enduring characters including Sally Ann Howes as Truly Scrumptious, Lionel Jeffries as the elder Potts, Anna Quayle as Baron Fröbe's Baroness, Benny Hill as the Toymaker, James Robertson Justice as Truly's wealthy industrialist father, Robert Helpmann as the scary villain Child Catcher, and Heather Ripley and Adrian Hall as Caractacus's adorable children Jemima and Jeremy. respectively.Van Dyke plays one of the big screen's most endearing single fathers, which draws Truly to him as much as his children do. They have imaginations cultivated by their father who, although he may spoil them a bit, is very emotionally "connected" to them, putting them to bed with songs and regales them with stories he seemingly makes up spontaneously.

I have watched this film so many times over the years but I can watch it again and again because it is such a wonderful and relaxing movie.Dick Van Dyke is at his most wonderful and Sally Ann Howes is just as lovely as her name in the film, Truly Scrumptious! The little girl, Heather Ripley is SOO wonderful and lovely and you can just see the joy and love in her eyes as she does her scenes.I don't see how this film is not higher rated but I know that the people that grew up watching this film are just as enchanted and in love with it just as much as I am.

Albert Broccoli, who produced the James Bond movies, wanted Bond-author Ian Fleming's kids' book, CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, to be a classic like "Mary Poppins." To achieve this, he hired the songwriters and choreographers from "Poppins" as well as its lead adult actor, Dick van Dyke. What even his deep pockets couldn't buy, however, was Julie Andrews, who that year preferred making the world-shaking classic (sarcasm) "Star!" What Broccoli also couldn't buy was charm. Disney's "Poppins" had it, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" lacks it."Chitty" has lots going for it. Tuneful songs, of which "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" itself may be the best (and is always inspiring). "The Roses of Success" is a wonderful comic, but also instructive, song, and amusingly done by the grandfather and a group of weird inventors. "The Old Bamboo" is toe-tapping, as is "Toot-Sweets." But "Hushabye Mountain" (though the sort of thing my father sang to me) is a drag.The cast is half-wonderful. Dick van Dyke lost the cockney accent that got him so despised in "Poppins" but he looks . . . strange. Sally Ann Howes is a good singer, but lacks charisma. If Broccoli wanted a "Poppins" like movie he should have studied the ugly kids from the earlier flick, who are far more realistic and genuinely cute (and better actors) than the blonde, blue-eyed Aryan nonentities of "Chitty." They're the major flaw in the picture.The casting coup was Lionel Jeffries, stealing every scene he's in as the grandfather. Everything from his walk to the way he moves his neck and the way he reads every line is funny (and I've been watching the movie for fifty years, being 8 when it first came out). He also has the song "P.O.S.H." (port out, starboard home). Everything he does in this movie in lovely.And while in "Poppins" the only bad guy was the father (who wasn't really bad, only distracted), "Chitty" produces one of the great screen villains, who haunted my nightmares as a kid, the infamous Child-Catcher (limned by dancer/choreographer Robert Helpmann). He's a perfect villain who will linger in kids' memories forever, though some of his menace may be lost on the small screen.The movie also features superb comic turns by Gert Frobe (a skilled comedian in Germany before becoming the perfect "Goldfinger") and 5'10" Anna Quayle.Possibly using the late-1960s ethos, the Vulgarian sequence ends with a kid-led revolution. After all, it was the 60s young people who took Lenin's Birthday and turned it into Earth Day. They were all about revolution and killing.So with so much good, why doesn't "Chitty" rank with "Poppins"? Perhaps because of the kids, whom I disliked when I was their age. Either the writers, director or producer made a few wrong choices (for instance, the kids laughing when Dick van Dyke's rocket doesn't work . . . when people on screen laugh at on screen antics, the audience doesn't, even I as a film layman know that). The lack of Julie Andrews (who was courted for the part) can't be considered, as we don't know how she'd have done in the role of Truly Scrumptious and because she proved with "Star!" and "Darling Lili" and others that even her marvelous talents can't overcome weak material.Personally, I think it's because while the first part of the movie (putting Chitty together and riding off in her singing the great "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" song) and the Vulgarian sequences don't really gel. It's even worse (SPOILERS) in that by the end it's clear the Vulgarian sequence that scared the hell out of me and every child in the world never happened. It's like being told a lie, when what you see on screen looks so much like the truth. Therefore the ending in a more mundane world is a bit of a come-down. Though it is a relief to know Benny Hill's toymaker didn't exist, either. Hill looks like Captain Kangaroo, which is good as we all loved the Captain, but acts like a rejected sketch from his own TV show.Too, despite the best work of Helpmann, Frobe and Quayle, and the wonderfully sinsiter waltz near the end, some of the Vulgarian sequences almost cry out for Graham Chapman to come in shouting, "Too silly!" The movie has many good shots (especially the end, when the credits roll) and some excellent cutting (esp. in the races at the beginning). The music is good enough. Helpmann is scary, Jeffries is hilarious. Van Dyke is fatherly . . . but we miss his ease of manner and his carelessness about life from "Poppins." A better performance may have been thwarted by his alcoholism, but he shows no trace of it on screen. But Howes, whose screen career goes back to at least 1945 as a child herself, and her operatic tones are fine, and whose expressions in the beginning are well-considered, isn't a screen-shaker.Perhaps the biggest trouble is the director doesn't seem to have any sympathy with the material. Dick van Dyke (quoted on this site) said he didn't seem to like kids. Maybe that, ultimately, is why the movie comes up just short of being one of the great classics. Or maybe it's that producer Broccoli, who was great for Bond, simply lacked the Disney touch. Or, going back to first causes, perhaps Fleming (whose book is vastly different but bizarre in its own way) wasn't a kids' writer at heart.In another plus, we get to see Desmond Llewellyn (Bond's "Q") as the junk man in the beginning. And, best of all, we all love Chitty.