The Unseen Movie Review

Herbie

There have been four Herbie movies to date – if you include the 1997 TV movie remake – and a TV series, all derived from the 1968 Disney classic The Love Bug, in which a San Francisco racer car driver teamed up with an intelligent Volkswagen Beetle for a series of high-speed capers. For what is basically just a car, and a car designed in Nazi Germany no less, Herbie proved surprisingly lovable, and has become a children’s comedy classic.

This new outing thankfully, after the disappointing 1997 version, doesn’t try to remake the original. It is instead fairly firmly a sequel. Herbie has been sitting in a scrapyard for the last couple of decades, his powers untapped and unknown. Given to a teenage girl (Lindsay Lohan) as a college graduation present, the dormant love bug’s powers are soon awakened – with perhaps a few too many special effects for the tastes of fans of the original – before finding a rival in Matt Dillon’s evil champion racer.

In other words, bar the initial set-up where Herbie is re-activated and a few special effects, it’s taking the original formula and rolling with it. The only major difference – beyond having a young girl in the driving seat – is that rather than rally racing, this time it’s NASCAR. And a forty year old Beetle in that sort of race is even less believable than a car with a mind of its own – especially in this age of satellite-guided navigation systems and “intelligent” breaking.

But it’s not the originality that matters in this kind of film, but the stunts, the jokes and, considering the presence of Lindsay Lohan in the lead, the sweetness and tentative romance. On these fronts, it’s certainly a passable kids’ comedy – but of the old school, with few concessions to the poor adults dragged along. Parents will instead have to content themselves with wondering whatever happened to the once promising careers of Michael Keaton and Matt Dillon that they have to stoop to this kind of movie.

With a fairly bland script it’s nothing special, but hits all the marks competently enough for its purposes. A handy diversion for the kids, who should be more than happy to be introduced to the little car which has brought so much joy to so many. Not only that, but then you’ll have a good excuse to go out and buy the originals, watch them all again, and show the kids how this sort of movie was so much better in the good old days. At which point they’ll probably turn round and remind you of precisely how old you are. Which is never much fun.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 4:13 AM