Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Best Film Ever?

Am I the only one who recognizes this film as perhaps the best, most complete and most satisfying movie ever made?


Think about it: this 1968 release was produced by the same team as produced the James Bond franchise. The special effects were and still remain fantastic and ahead of their time. The story masterfully incorporates and combines action, adventure, music, dance, romance, coming of age, terror, comedy and a strong moral compass. The score inspired millions and is still popular to this day.

Has there been been a film that succeeded on so many levels? No, there has not. What a remarkable cinematic accomplishment.

 

Maybe the best screen villain ever, the child-catcher scared the bejesus out of me as a kid!

 

This is one of my all-time favorites! The movie is wonderful! The music is wonderful! This movie should get the royal box set treatment by Warner Brothers (like what they did with "Gone With The Wind" & "The Wizard Of Oz".) or by Criterion. I bought it each time it was released to get any extras & the upgrade.

 

Most contrapuntal to be sure!

 

Great Stanley Unwin cameo.

 

I get this movie confused with BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS.

 

I always joke with my wife that, as a mechanical engineer, I wish they would have shown what Dick Van Dyke was doing to restore the car, instead of whatever the kids were doing.

 

I don’t really remember the film, but my brother and his friends used to refer to some kid they went to college with as the “child catcher” and swore he was a dead ringer.

 

I thought it was a chitty film myself.

 

To be short & succinct: Yes. Yes you are.

I loved the book as a child. I saw the movie after reading the book, & for me seeing it once was about ten times too many. Even as a child I found it silly & inane.

But, to each their own.

 

This or Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971).

 

Thanks to this film, I learned my first bad word.
It was '68, I was four, we saw this first run. Back
in nursery school, we kids yapped about it during
arts'n'crafts and one boy called the film,

"Sh!tty Sh!tty Bang Bang"

Dunno if I asked him what it meant, but there ya go.

We saw this again ten years ago as a family and it lost
some of its charm. But it remains fairly solid. Good cast.

 

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is too good for you!

 

Even as an 8 year old kid, I thought this film stunk on ice.

 

Exactly.

 

Yes yes whatever you say

 

Coincidentally, after not having thought about the movie in 30 years, we were talking about it last Wednesday on our bike ride.

 

One of my childhood friends had the car.

 

See what I mean? It is that good.

 

Dick Van Dyke the Greatest British Thespian ever.............."Bert the Chimney Sweep".

 

Better a dancer who can't Cockney than a Cockney who can't dance.

 

Oh it's a damn good film.

Loved it as a kid. When my kid was old enough, I showed it to him and we had a great laugh. Lots of great slapstick and just a little bit of risque humor- I assume I am not the only one who noticed how Fleming named his female characters: Truly Scrumptious vs P____ Galore.

It ain't Citizen Kane or the Godfather. But it was not meant to be. It's imaginative fun. And well done.

 

Chitty is indeed a great film, when in an era great films knew how to be made.