Movies raise all sorts of questions they never answer. Take the flying car, which figures in the early scenes of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, released yesterday. If the car is moving fast enough to fly, won't so many bugs slam into the windshield that you can't see through it? And if you slam into Superman up there, are you still covered for collision?

The skies are full of vehicles in:

The Fifth Element (1997), and one of them is a yellow cab driven by Bruce Willis. It's 2263 in New York. Motorists drive through the air in a multi-levelled grid complemented by monorails speeding up and down the skyscrapers, which makes hitchhiking a challenge. Milla Jovovich leaps from a vertiginous ledge to escape the police and crashes through the roof of Willis's taxi. Taxi's computerized voice: "You just had an accident." Willis: "Yes, I know I just had an accident, you daffy bastard." Willis can't resist saving Jovovich, which is just as well since she holds the key to the planet's survival. The key to personal survival is: Don't drive anywhere near Bruce Willis.

If this life appeals to you, try the air traffic in:

Blade Runner (1982), in which Harrison Ford grudgingly tracks down renegade androids Daryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer. The roofs of flying cars open up like the lids of sardine cans and huge billboards run video advertisements of geishas eating cherries, which makes it tough to keep your eyes on the road, or whatever air lanes are called. (Suggestion for a musical traffic signal: Oh, you take the high road, and I'll take the low road. . .)

Too film-noirish? Switch gears with the frothy musical:

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), in which the songwriting Sherman brothers appear to have exhausted their talent while writing memorable tunes for Mary Poppins and are now running on empty.

Sample lyrics sung by Sally Ann Howes, as heroine Truly Scrumptious: "Truly scrumptious, you two are truly scrumptious. . . . My heart beats so unruly/I also love you truly." Dick Van Dyke is inventor Caractacus Potts, who builds the car of the title and pilots it through the skies with Howes and his two children to save grandfather Lionel Jeffries from the clutches of Gert Frobe as Baron Bomburst in Vulgaria, hindered only by a few truly awful songs.

It's based on the children's book by Ian Fleming, whose James Bond novels had already indicated his penchant for bizarre names: Pussy Galore, Oddjob, M, Q.

But perhaps you'd prefer:

The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), in which eccentric Fred MacMurray ignores his fiancée while creating a form of flying rubber (flubber) that, when incorporated into his Model T, lets him fly the car hither and yon, which makes a change from Chitty Chitty's hither and yawn.

It's tempting to include Thelma and Louise (1991) on the list, but since that's not really a flying-car movie -- at least not for long -- the next film on offer is:

The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), in which Roger Moore as Bond hooks up inadvertently with a holdover from Live and Let Die, Louisiana sheriff Clifton James, to chase bad guys Christopher Lee and Herve Villechaize. Moore prepares to leap the canal in his car. James, heart in mouth: "You're not thinkin' o'. . ." Moore, affecting a Louisiana accent: "I shore am, boy."

The car achieves a perfect 360-degree flip across the canal -- the stunt took months to set up -- but it's all for naught, since Lee and Villechaize have already attached a pair of wings to their own car and are flying away to an island off the Chinese coast. Heart-stopping stuff, but not quite as heart-stopping as Roger Moore affecting a Louisiana accent.
wclements@globeandmail.ca