if YOU had final cut...

I personally think the movie doesn't really start until the vulgaria scenes. They are not part of the book, however they add to the suspense and action of the movie.

I find right from the beginning scenes could have been shorter or cut. The original race is much to long, and it takes forever until the first good musical scene of the ole bamboo where he gets the money to work on the car (remembering that the car is the star of the film. Lonely man seems wasted on children and is stretched to great lengths.

Also as a teen then adult seeing the movie, i do have to say the baroness must stay as she really got my teen thoughts going :)

I would cut out absolutely everything and start over from the beginning. Read Ian Fleming's original novel to see how this film should have looked, including Edward Gorey's illustrations.

It would work better as a two-parter, certainly.

I'm fascinated by the idea of a man who seems to be an expatriate north american who nonetheless has a thoroughly english father, a man who is presently a widower (or a divorcee) living in Nowheresville, southern England, with two children who seem to take more after their mother than their father. I'd like to know more about what happened that sundered this family and whether this tragedy was what pushed Potts into his present avocation as an inventor. Why does this man, who is clearly an urbanite, prefer to live in a rural countryside, despite clearly having an obsession with technology? In a world that already has radio he is interested in developing television; in a world that already has powered flight, he wants to develop rocket propulsion.

I would have included scenes and dialogue at least partly explaining some of this, instead of simply presenting Potts as a hopelessly impractical man living in a relentlessly practical world.

It is a bit sprawling for the kind of film that it is. I might have cut down some of the spies antics, and maybe slim down Pott's scene where he's showing Truly his inventions and what not.

Otherwise I think the film is actually fine as is.

i would cut out the silly ending where it turns out none of it really happened. And might change the plot generally to make it more like the original story.