December 18, 1968
Warfield
Musical, Children's, Fantasy, Historical
VHS
B-
Speaking of movies I grew up with....But this one is, although a childhood favorite, something that I criticized, even as a child. The things that bothered me then are the ones that bother me now: almost everything involving Vulgaria and the Vulgarians, except for the awesome castle (mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein). The first roughly one hour of the movie is delightful (details below), but then Mr. Potts starts telling a story about the Baron of Vulgaria coveting their car. We get unfunny spies, an unfunny baron who hates his wife to the point of unsuccessfully but repeatedly attempting her murder, unfunny courtiers, and a possibly creepier than intended "child-catcher." And yet, that last hour or so is bearable because it still has some good songs.
As a child and now, I would've been quite content just hanging out with the Potts family and their new friend Truly Scrumptious. Heck, I would've loved to have been Jemima Potts when I was a kid. She's got a nice twin brother, a nice sheepdog, an eccentric but doting inventor father who doesn't care if she skips school, an eccentric but doting grandfather who reads aloud with a great voice ("the big brown bear came lolloping over the hill") and tells Groucho Marx jokes, a car that's fun to play in even before her dad turns it into a phantasmorgical machine, a nice old house with a windmill, beautiful English countryside where it apparently only rains at night, and now this nice, rich, pretty lady who will probably be her new mum. Jemima and Jeremy seem to spend most of their time outside the "fantasy" sequence laughing. Then they go to Vulgaria and become idiots, falling for the child-catcher's trick and yapping like puppies.
It's strange, because from what I recall of the Ian Fleming novel, the kids are sharp and get themselves out of a jam. Of course, the script, co-written by Roald Dahl, bears little resemblance to the novel. Oddly enough, it is a bit like James Bond movies, with not only Albert Broccoli and Goldfinger involved, but some other points of connection. Too bad the spies couldn't have been a 1910s version of Bond minions, rather than the forgettable slapstickers that they are.
The movie does resemble the Mary Poppins movie, with Sherman Brothers songs that are surprisingly good (even the Baron and Baroness duet, and I don't mind that the title song is sung four times, because it's catchy), and of course Van Dyke as the male lead, although this time he makes absolutely no attempt at a British accent. (Poor Benny Hill and the other Vulgarians are saddled with vaguely German accents.) Like I said, I think that first hour is more entertaining to kids. As an adult, I noticed that the Caractacus/Truly romance is really rushed, especially since it turns out that her thinking and singing of him as a "lovely, lonely man" is entirely part of his story, although when they return to reality, she doesn't think the idea of them getting married is ridiculous. He clearly has issues about women-- since he also made up the Baron & Baroness marriage-- but we do see he's good with his children, if not terribly practical. By the way, he and Lionel Jeffries were both 42 at this point, Van Dyke actually six months older than "Grandpa."
Director and co-writer Ken Hughes would go on to direct Sextette, which is a more definitively bad movie musical. Richard Wattis, who plays the male secretary at the sweet factory, was Seton in The Importance of Being Earnest. Phil Collins, then 17, plays a Vulgarian child, although he'd been an onscreen teen in the audience of A Hard Day's Night. Anna Quayle was Minnie in that and is the baroness here. Bernard Spear, who's the second spy, would be a tailor in Yentl.
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