Nobody else can think of them.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — 2.5/5

On my Dick Van Dyke shit, so I have rewatched this, though I only actually have memories of the final scene, so perhaps this is the first time I'm actually seeing it. Here, Dick plays a harder character (snicker). It feels like he took the Mary Poppins accent criticism to heart and refused to even try a British accent, which I think hurts the character. He'd just feel lighter with a little cheerio. But even so, warmth shines through his at times gruff exterior. The kids bring it out in him, and they're great, they feel real, and you sense love between them. (Not with Truly Scrumptious though, horribly miscast in this role.) The movie's first half is actually really good; it's a real world with touches of living in the clouds, but the movie loses me completely when it loses any sense of reality. It goes full cloud, with no proper preparation. It, like Poppins, is "An Excuse For Stuff To Happen" movie, precariously throwing out reasons to dance and act silly, but without any grounding or any illusions of real plot or character growth. This and Mary Poppins are both flights of fancy but Mary Poppins always floats back down to Earth. This movie left and never came back. Which is unfortunate, because it was heading somewhere before getting completely sidetracked. I think there's the possibility of a good remake here, just bring more to the fore the idea of a man who has trouble holding onto reality. Make it a little more 'Life Is Beautiful.'