(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 19 April 2002

MARK LAWSON:
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, directed by Adrian Noble. For good or ill, the discussion has been about the mechanics rather than the music. Is it the right emphasis?

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
Yes, I fear it is. Being one of the people who turned up on Wednesday night hoping to see it and spent most of the evening standing out in Argyle Street not able to get in, I hope it doesn't happen too often.

Without the car, there is not much of an evening. The car is spectacular. It does get up and come out across the audience.

Try as hard as you might, you can't see how it is done. It's terrific. If you take it away, it's an average show. The songs are sweet, we remember them as we have seen the movie.

I rather liked the dogs rushing round, I thought it was nice. But there is a sense of a hybrid as well, partly for children and partly for adults.

There is a very strange scene in the second half where they are wearing Spanish costumes and dancing. Lots of people were sitting there wondering what is going on.

I also remember it as not being scary enough. Not enough scarey features. It's the car from start to finish.

MARK LAWSON:
Rachel Holmes, That's the problem that the car goes up, but the songs make you want to throw up on the whole?

RACHEL HOLMES:
I thought what was striking was the machinery. The songs were great, yes there were singing and actors, but I was fascinated and mesmerised by the machinery.

All the kids were fascinated by the machine, and yes, the car is the star. But you also have all the other machines and the thing that is striking about it, is that the special effects are more realistic in this live production than they were in the 1968 movie.

What you have got is this 19th century mechanical technology being driven by 21st century software.

MARK LAWSON:
I was resistant of this, because the advertising line is: "You'll believe a car can fly".

At no point ever have I walked around and wondered if a car could fly, but are people turning up to see it. Tom Paulin?

TOM PAULIN:
I found myself in a whole great congregation I felt. It was something, an act of worship, of people really enjoying themselves, out to enjoy themselves and it was infectious.

You felt that it was a great experience they were having. I liked the dogs on stage. An actor friend once told me the that dogs are always very good.

I loved the bamboo routine. It was like a dissident morris dancing speeded up.

MARK LAWSON:
Isn't that the problem with it being a musical though? The Sherman Brothers have written this song called 'Me Old Bamboo', that has nothing to do with the rest of the plot whatsoever. It's just inserted in there.

TOM PAULIN:
Yes but it came in like some ancient English folk custom with morris dancing. I really liked it, it was a very good routine. There was a Countryside Alliance quality about it.

MARK LAWSON:
There has been much speculation about what they might do with the classically trained director.

My heart sank at the beginning because it did appear that he had given the car some motivation. He has put in a prologue in which Chitty loses the race.

You felt the car had said "What's my motivation?" and he'd said, "Oh, you lost a race once and you're trying to get it back." More seriously though, he specifically makes the stolen children a reference to the concentration camps. Is that too serious?

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
I don't think so. I think children are capable of dealing with serious things. I don't think they pushed it far enough. I mean, was Bulgaria meant to be a metaphor for Nazi Germany?

MARK LAWSON:
It had all the flags.

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
It was vaguely done. That is what I meant by the sense that it was not frightening enough.

Something that interested me a lot about it was that kids nowadays see Harry Potter, the incredible Quidditch match. Actually, is this now what you demand when you go to the theatre? We have had this car, it is the next time somebody does this, will we have something even more fantastic.

MARK LAWSON:
An interesting point is that because you can do anything on film now with computers, there is a frisson on seeing it done in front of your eyes.

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
Because of fear it will collapse and kill 20,000 theatre goers, which would certainly excite people.

I felt like last night going to see it that you were kind of thinking, gosh, is it going to be all right?

TOM PAULIN:
It is not just the car. It's Brian Blessed. I kept thinking of Gulliver and Lilliput, the man mountain, and then I thought he climbed Everest.

RACHEL HOLMES:
Also, what we have to recognise is looking at this now, is that it is nostalgia, to when the car was about liberty, freedom, adventure.

Now, we shouldn't really be saying to kids, that is what it is, that they are dangerous, destroying the environment.