The second half of the film.


Does anybody else feel cheated that the vulgaria stuff never actually happened?

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I do!! I was so dissapointed. My goodness, that was the best part of the entire movie. I don't remember it being just a dream when I was little, but then it was so many years ago.

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Well, the transition to the "story part set in Vulgaria" of the film was very well done. I thought it came together nicely in the end and had no trouble with it.

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Well, I wasn't really disappointed. However, one of my mom's friends from work watched it for the first time. He was drunk while watching it and rather disappointed that the stuff with Vulgaria was just a story.

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Perhaps they were taking their cue from The Wizard of Oz -- the original disappointing ending (for me, anyway). It doesn't so much disappoint me here, as much as it makes me sad that they copped out. At least in WoO we didn't know until the end that it was fake. Here they give it away and then expect us to care what happens. Why should we when it's just a story that Caractacus is telling?

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Are you aware that the entire movie is just a story that the filmmakers are telling?

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Yeah, even when I was a kid I felt a little disappointed because the second half of the film is what makes the film so much fun. Particularly the child kidnapper (downright creepy!). I am watching it right now and we know it's a story because of the way the film does a dreamlike wave and then we see the Baron's ship. To my knowledge, I don't believe there was any sequence like this in the book.



I'm just a guy that likes horror flicks.

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The funny thing about it(for me) is it took me a long time before I realised the Vulgaria sequence was just a story told by Potts to his children.

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Not really. We know it is a story that Potts is telling. I guess you got so caught up in the story you forgot it was only that.

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Makes you wonder just how Potts ended up as a widower! Also how much of the second half is make-believe if Chitty responded when in the junkyard when threatened with melting down; where does the fantasy begin?

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What makes it creepy to me is that he's telling Truly a story about his kids getting kidnapped by a child catcher, as they are listening in the back seat of the vehicle, seemingly in a ruse to get her to fall in love him with him within a mere 72 hours of meeting, just so he can sell the Toot Sweets.

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As a kid it sort of bothered me, but I loved the movie anyhow.

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The real problem with is that the second half and the Vulgaria stuff is the best part of the film. The first half goes on forever and for me it only really comes alive when the Childcatcher appears. Watching it on telly now!

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hmm, he also tells the kids about the barons wife dressed in a hot corset and stockings while her husband tries to kill her...Boy this is on sick Dad hahaha

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If it didn't happen, if it was only a story, then how did the car fly at the end of the movie?

It is revealed that Vulgaria was a story. But then, after Caractacus once again rescues Truly from the water, she says "...so dreams really do come true." Caractacus says you have to be practical too. Then the car flies. This is a wink...it didn't really happen, or did it?



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I have already posted this but will again. The second half of the film was not in Ian Flemmings original novel (the first part was). Ian Flemming had died when CCBB was made. It was Roald Dahl (who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The Witches) who wrote the whole Vulgaria story and created the Child Catcher.

When you speak to most people, they find the first part of the film quite boring and wait for the Vulgaria story to start up because the Child Catcher is just so riveting. He has something like 10 minutes of screen time in a film that is over 2 hours long!

I really wish they had scrapped a lot of that nonsense earlier in the film and effectively made the picture on Dahl's story, about a land that hates children and has an evil child catcher hunting them down.

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I actually wait for the second part to see the hot baroness :) wow the sexy costumes she wore in a kids movie, what were they thinking :)

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It really doesn't work as a 'story' told by Potts. It's especially weird when Truly sings about "This Lovely, Lonely Man". Would Potts have been presumptuous enough to include a scene that shows her budding attraction for him in a story that he is telling on the beach?

"What do you want me to do, draw a picture? Spell it out!"

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Yeah that's what I always think when I watch. "So kids. Truly here then sang a song about how in love with me she is." I'd love to see her reaction to that.


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He is also telling the kids about the Baron trying to kill his wife while she flirts with him, Sounds like a sick puppy telling all this on the beach hahaha

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I wish they had brought in Vulgaria much, much earlier than they did.

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I know it is a "story" being told but i always felt and still do that it really happened. At the end they fly away so the magic is there. My grandpa told me stories when I was young though they were fantasy they we're told like they really happened. Example he would tell me how on Friday night I went to a different world through a magic mirror in the basement. Just because it was a story doesn't mean (magically speaking) that it didn't really happen and my grandpa was just re telling the story if that makes sense. I just assumed that actually more time had passed in the lives of the characters and they were recalling this particular adventure in a story.

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At the end they do fly around in Chitty, and that makes for some convoluted story structure, but I doubt it was all a grand plan of multiple story words.
I think they filmed that airborne ending, and then decided to make Vulgaria a Caractacus Potts storytelling figment. They left in the flying scene just to be mysterious, like maybe Vulgaria and all was really true somehow.

____________________
The story is king.

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I remember as a kid being confused by the ending, and not being able to figure out if it was all real or not.

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