A down-on-his-luck inventor turns a broken-down Grand Prix car into a fancy vehicle for his children, and then they go off on a magical fantasy adventure to save their grandfather in a far-off land.
An apprentice witch, three kids and a cynical magician conman search for the missing component to a magic spell to be used in the defense of Britain in WWII.
Director:
Robert Stevenson
Stars:
Angela Lansbury,
David Tomlinson,
Roddy McDowall
Dorothy Gale is swept away from a farm in Kansas to a magical land of Oz in a tornado and embarks on a quest with her new friends to see the Wizard who can help her return home to Kansas and help her friends as well.
Snobbish phonetics Professor Henry Higgins (Sir Rex Harrison) agrees to a wager that he can make flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) presentable in high society.
Director:
George Cukor
Stars:
Audrey Hepburn,
Rex Harrison,
Stanley Holloway
An eccentric professor invents wacky machinery but can't seem to make ends meet. When he invents a revolutionary car, a foreign government becomes interested in it and resorts to skulduggery to get their hands on it.Written by
Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au>
Before the man at the carnival gets his disastrous haircut from Potts, he jokes to his wife when she says he needs a haircut "That's where my strength is." He could be referencing the biblical figure of Samson, whose incredible strength came from his long hair. See more »
Goofs
Ragdoll runs up the stairs in big rectangular yellow shoes. He enters the corridor in normal black shoes. See more »
A delightful fantasy for the whole family to watch. There really is something for everyone here. A cartoonish story with "comic book characters" like the "Child Catcher" (Robert Helpmann) and "Baron Bomburst" (Gert Frobe) that the kids will love, and some marvelous song and dance routines from Sally Ann Howe as "Truly Scrumptious" and Dick Van Dyke as the inventor "Caractacus Potts" that the grown ups will marvel at. I never realized until I watched this movie as an adult what a marvelously talented man Van Dyke is, but his dance scenes are absolutely amazing (particularly "The Old Bamboo" performance at the carnival.)
The story is imaginative. A flying car whisks Truly and Caractacus, along with the two Potts children Jeremy and Jemima (Adrian Hall and Heather Ripley respectively) off to the fictional kingdom of "Vulgaria" (where children are forbidden) to rescue eccentric Grandpa Potts (played absolutely perfectly by Lionel Jeffries), who has been kidnapped by Bomburst in the mistaken belief that he's the inventor of the car. This was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and you have to think like a child to watch it and appreciate it as an adult. Until today I had never actually seen the movie unedited, and I found it just a delight.
It's true that there are weaknesses. Although Dick Van Dyke put on a marvellous performance, he ironically seems totally out of place with his American accent. I truly can't figure out how Caractacus' father can have a British accent, and Caractacus' children can have British accents, but Caractacus himself has an American accent? It's something you wouldn't notice as a kid, but as an adult I found it somewhat distracting. Also, Hall and Ripley didn't blow me away (I know - give them a break; they were just kids. Still, I've seen better performances from children that age.)
But why nitpick. Suspend disbelief, think like a kid, sit back and enjoy the ride.
8/10.
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A delightful fantasy for the whole family to watch. There really is something for everyone here. A cartoonish story with "comic book characters" like the "Child Catcher" (Robert Helpmann) and "Baron Bomburst" (Gert Frobe) that the kids will love, and some marvelous song and dance routines from Sally Ann Howe as "Truly Scrumptious" and Dick Van Dyke as the inventor "Caractacus Potts" that the grown ups will marvel at. I never realized until I watched this movie as an adult what a marvelously talented man Van Dyke is, but his dance scenes are absolutely amazing (particularly "The Old Bamboo" performance at the carnival.)
The story is imaginative. A flying car whisks Truly and Caractacus, along with the two Potts children Jeremy and Jemima (Adrian Hall and Heather Ripley respectively) off to the fictional kingdom of "Vulgaria" (where children are forbidden) to rescue eccentric Grandpa Potts (played absolutely perfectly by Lionel Jeffries), who has been kidnapped by Bomburst in the mistaken belief that he's the inventor of the car. This was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and you have to think like a child to watch it and appreciate it as an adult. Until today I had never actually seen the movie unedited, and I found it just a delight.
It's true that there are weaknesses. Although Dick Van Dyke put on a marvellous performance, he ironically seems totally out of place with his American accent. I truly can't figure out how Caractacus' father can have a British accent, and Caractacus' children can have British accents, but Caractacus himself has an American accent? It's something you wouldn't notice as a kid, but as an adult I found it somewhat distracting. Also, Hall and Ripley didn't blow me away (I know - give them a break; they were just kids. Still, I've seen better performances from children that age.)
But why nitpick. Suspend disbelief, think like a kid, sit back and enjoy the ride.
8/10.