THE MOVIE

What? Ian Fleming? Surely not...but wait...who's this? Albert R Brocolli? Yep, the famous James Bond duo are responsible for bringing us Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. We even get performances from the late Desmond Llewelyn as the junk-yard owner. The screenplay was also co-written by Roal Dahl. This really was a bunch of famous people....

This is a musical which is centred around an inventor, Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) who builds everything from musical candy to a car that floats and flies.

With two small children who get into everything, Caractacus Potts meets the lovely (and rich) Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes). While the first meeting may not be the most favourable, they all end up good friends and head off to the beach for a picnic in the car named Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Whilst on the picnic, they begin their adventures where they enter a town which forbides children. When the children are captured, Caractacus Potts and Truly Scrumptious must rescue them.

With its catchy tunes this film was nominated for theme tune (Best Song 1968).

THE TRANSFER

Video:

Another donkeys-years old movie re-released onto DVD after being remastered.

Mistakenly labelled on the cover as 2.35:1 (it's actually full-screen at 1.33:1), this movie has no 16:9 enhancement. This dosn't present any problems though.

Colours are very rich and vibrant. The kids would certainly love this disc - the clarity is exceptional.

Extensive shadow detail helps to bring even subtle details to life in what is a very good transfer.

No compression faults were noticed anywhere (altough the flying-car sequences look all the more fake for the clarity of the picture).

Audio:

Again, just like Fiddler On The Roof, this soundtrack has been remastered into 5.1 channels.

The same guy must have remixed this track too, because it suffers from the same 'features' as the Fiddler track.

Dialogue has been broken down into all 3 front channels, although it occasionally pans more to the left or the right, depending where the person speaking is located on the screen.

Surround and sub-woofer usage is kept to being used for the musical sections of the show (and there are plently of those).

There were no audio synch problems.

This is a very active soundtrack when the music kicks in.

THE EXTRAS

Theatrical trailer - a widescreen trailer from the late sixties. It shows it's age and lack of restoration. Funnliy enough, the voice-over man sounds like the same guy who did the original Bond trailer voice-overs. mmmmmm....

Picture disc - as is the norm for MGM/UA discs from Warner, a very pretty disc lies inside the cover.

SUMMARY

While the movie does not impress my wife (she finds the kids annoying), it does rate as an all-time classic.

We would have been better served, I feel, with the real widescreen version, not full-screen.

I think the re-watch value is very high, but a few more extras wouldn't have gone astray.