Review: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of the prompts in the Read Harder Challenge for 2018 is to read a children’s classic from before 1980. I had recently completed reading Ian Fleming’s Bond series, so his “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” came to mind. I always liked the movie, and I wanted to see how far from the book it was. Ends up, quite a bit was changed. The first obvious change I noticed in the book was the lack of Truly Scrumptious. Truly could have been the name of a Bond girl, and she was inventor Pott’s love interest in the movie. But in the book Potts is married. Also missing in the book was the grandfather and his iconic potting shed. Another difference was the memorable dance number at Scrumptious Candy. I figured this would not be in the book, but that dance number was actually described, rather succinctly, in a paragraph or so.

And then came the adventures. Chitty on the sandbar was pretty much identical between book and movie, but after that early episode, the movie had the adventurers in a Bavarian kingdom with child snatchers and robot dolls and such. But the book had a more basic adventure involving a British gun runner and a little kidnapping. This was totally different and quite a bit underwhelming when compared to the movie.

Between the book and the movie, I liked the movie much more than the book. But the book does its job of introducing the characters and setting up the adventures, and made Chitty more of an independent, magical being, one capable of smiling and blinking, and some kind of ESP. And there are additional books in the series which might capture the magic of the movie. I may give them a shot.


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