Although I remember watching the HERBIE movies when I was young, I remember very little of the movies themselves. While they were certainly entertaining to a single-digits-aged version of me, they didn’t really make an impression, and I certainly felt no reason to watch them again in the intervening years. As such, HERBIE: FULLY LOADED, a new film with which Disney hopes to update the franchise for a new generation, held little interest for me. Decades-down-the-line attempts to cash in on the more beloved films from my youth (say, BACK TO THE FUTURE) might have yielded either annoyance or nostalgia- or some strange combination of both- but I was largely apathetic to a new HERBIE movie. It’s just for the money, after all.
Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I should have feared the worst, for HERBIE: FULLY LOADED is nothing more than a blatant grab for the youth market’s attention and their parents’ spending cash. Simply put, it’s lousy in pretty much way a kids’ movie can be- poorly directed, indifferently acted, and above all stupid. It’s clearer now more than ever how far the Disney name has fallen, affixing their name to this bit of nothing.
The film’s opening is a sad one if you don’t know any better. Herbie, the Volkswagen Beetle with a mind of his own whose adventures were recounted in the first four films in the series, now finds himself in a junkyard, waiting to be compacted. Hardly the most fitting end to his storied career, it should be said. However, he is rescued one day by Maggie (Lindsay Lohan), daughter of a down-on-his-luck racing-team captain (Michael Keaton), who has recently graduated from college and begrudgingly accepts Herbie as a graduation gift from her dad.
In no time at all Herbie is up to his old tricks, such as popping wheelies in the streets and squirting various fluids on baddies such as big-time racing champ Trip Murphy (Matt Dillon), and some new ones as well, as when he takes a cue from Maggie’s skateboarding stunts and spins around on his back tires during a road race. Eventually Maggie discovers that she and Herbie are on the same wavelength, and she breaks into the family business of racing, first against her father’s wishes, but in the end with his support. Oh, and Herbie also gets a crush on one of the newer-model Beetles.
Now, I realize how absurd it may seem to question the suspension of disbelief in a movie that features a magical Volkswagen. But even in the context of this story, this movie has some whoppers. The one that really stuck out in my mind was the fact that no one seems to remember Herbie. Sure, I can believe that the twentysomething Maggie may not have heard of Herbie (the last movie was released before Lohan was born, after all), but what about her dad, who has been in the racing business all his life? What about Trip, or the other drivers against whom Herbie competes in the final race? Hell, what about the commentators? If anyone would have heard of Herbie, it should be them, right? I only ask because the film is posited as a sequel to the originals- the opening credits are a montage of his feats from the first four movies, so it’s not like I’m being nit-picky here. Perhaps they could have introduced a character who would have known the truth- say, an older man who could sell the car to Maggie in the opening reel and imparts Herbie’s history to her. It’s not like Dean Jones is all that busy, after all.
Instead, we get cheesy slapstick throughout the film, with moments of canned drama thrown in so that the characters can have something to overcome, I guess. But let’s concentrate not so much on the drama (the usual business about a struggling family and a dad who won’t let his daughter realize her dream, yada yada) and more on the comedy, or what the film calls comedy anyhow. Much of the slapstick is of the wacky-car variety, which is a holdover from the original films, but here it’s souped-up with liberal amounts of CGI. But it’s not even good CGI. When Herbie takes to the road, it’s a car, but when he flips and does various tricks, it’s obviously animated by computers, and the result is even less convincing than, say, the cars in Pixar movies, which aren’t designed to mesh with photo-realistic backgrounds. It’s like Disney didn’t even try to make Herbie fit in with his surroundings. Part of the (modest) charm of the original Herbie movies was that Herbie’s stunts were performed by real metal-and-glass automobiles, and when you’ve obviously looking at a digital imposter, the charm is gone.
Director Angela Robinson is new to me, but a quick Web search reveals that her first film was the lesbian-spy spoof D.E.B.S., a film that I have just vigorously crossed off my to-see list (not that it was all that high on the list in the first place). While Robinson aims for a candy-colored hipness here, all her directorial flourishes fall flat. At one point in the film she tosses in nine-way split screen for no particular reason, and the effect is a lot like looking at a television display in a department store where most of the sets are tuned to the same channel, and the rest are showing fishing. Her use of music is just as uninspired- while some of the songs she uses are good, they don’t enhance the film, but rather make you wish you were listening to them at home (the new take on T.Rex’s “Metal Guru” is especially unfortunate).
All of the entertainment-media coverage Lindsay Lohan has gotten of late has obscured the fact that she’s actually a talented young actress, in films like MEAN GIRLS and even the 2003 remake of FREAKY FRIDAY. I despair that she has become pigeonholed as a party girl by her tabloid-friendly antics, and as a result she tends to be lumped in with no-talents like Paris Hilton rather than legitimately skilled actresses in the same age range. I wonder if her recent behavior has been caused (at least in part) with her longtime contract with Disney, which has released four of her films, including three remakes of or sequels to “classic” titles. Perhaps someday (hopefully soon) she’ll be cast in a compelling role again, rather than one that’s largely dependent on squealing in alarm at the shenanigans of a magical car. And I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Matt Dillon and Michael Keaton, two talented actors who deserve better than this movie, although in Keaton’s case HERBIE: FULLY LOADED is emblematic of his recent career path.
Summer is here, and since the kids are out of school so Hollywood has decided to bombard them with (mostly bad) kids’ movies. Aside from the pleasant surprise MADAGASCAR most of this summer’s family offerings (KICKING AND SCREAMING, SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL, THE PERFECT MAN and now HERBIE) have been terrible. Lately Hollywood has been bemoaning the slump in ticket sales compared to last year, and some have chalked this up to the downturn in quality “product”- since the movies aren’t that good, people aren’t coming to see them. I have an idea- let’s start by making better kids’ movies. Children are at an impressionable age, but are also fairly undiscerning when it comes to entertainment- as long as they have something to occupy them, most kids tend to be happy. But the movies that stick with them- E.T. and PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, or in more recent years the Pixar movies- are the ones that respect them rather than treating them like image-hungry little drones. Maybe if Hollywood can put out more good children’s entertainment, then when the kids get older they will truly care about movies instead of simply using them to pass time on a boring Saturday night, and they’ll demand quality from their movies. But that’s probably wishful thinking on my part.
Start your engines! Lindsay Lohan does the driving when Herbie -- the fun-lovin , free-wheelin , 63 VW Beetle with a mind of its own -- returns better...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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