Herbie: Fully Loaded Review

I'll be honest. I didn't expect much from this movie. I'm not really a fan of several of the things Disney is doing with some of their more iconic stars and franchises. (I'm still reeling in pain at the fact they made a Cinderella 2 movie.) But I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised with this offering from them.

It's been several decades since Herbie was first introduced to the world as the little bug that could, and since then he's been having a bit of a slump. After living up the high life that is pretty much the stereotype of what people think being famous is all about, Herbie has lost all of what makes him great to the point where he had to get a job as a taxi just to stay running. Which ultimately doesn't work anyways, since the first thing we see Herbie do is trying to escape a scrap yard.

Meanwhile, Maggie Peyton (Lisndsay Lohan) has graduated from college, the first in her family's history. Her family history, speaking of which, is in racing. She loves to race, but she prefers the illegal kind of street racing, which becomes more and more apparent as the film moves on. Her father (Michael Keaton) tries his best to protect and provide for her, which is why he brings her to a junk yard to pick out a new car in the classic good-hearted Dad faux pas we've come to just accept in films and shows today.

Incidentally, this is how Herbie and Maggie meet. From there on, it's just one fun ride through a plot that offers a lot of interesting twists and turns.

I don't care if you like Lohan or not; she was actually pretty good in this movie. She played the role of a Nascar kid growing up in what appears to be some utopian city full of car lovers really well. Yes, the fact that her character is suppose to be a college graduate and her acting reads as if she is a high school graduate is nothing that can be over looked. But this is a movie about a car's relationship to a driver. Despite his lack of screen time, Herbie is the real star.

I liked how they introduced Herbie to the generation that has no real memory of him. I feel fortunate that I grew up watching bits and pieces of the old Herbie movies, and smiled widely when I saw several of my favorite scenes from the hold franchise. It was probably one of the best opening sequences I've seen. Like with the Spider-Man 2 opening, you don't need to know what happened before after you watch this sequence.

I think one of the more surprising actors in this movie, for me at least, was Michael Keaton. I didn't expect him to play the part of a Nascar Racing dad, but he does it very well. He looks, sounds, and even acts the part! For a while, I honestly thought he was someone that I knew or bumped into somewhere in Nashville.

The special effects in the film are kind of a mixed bag. Those with a keen eye will notice something that could be seen as a throw-back but probably will be scene as a poor job. What I mean is that some of the CG in the film was rendered in a way to make it look like the old Herbie films. There's no real thick and obvious black line around Herbie or Lohan on the scenes that I could see, but it's obvious they didn't blend things like lightning and shadows to make it look more realistic. I liked the look, but in this day and age were we have more realistic looking renderings of objects in films, most people would see this as sloppy.

The story is cute. It's about finding your direction in life and how something small could get you there fast. That's if you read into it like I did. For the most part, the story is entertaining and in the true style of Herbie films from what I remember. However, the direction and pace of the film did drag. At times, the story felt more like an experiment in how to write and film a story from the 60's and 70's.

The movie itself overall is pretty good. It's worth a rent at the least. It definitely surprised me as to how good it was. I was expecting it to just destroy the franchise, but who knows? Maybe we will end up seeing more of the Love Bug in the future. I just hope it isn't in a cheap and ultimately vain attempt at trying to make more money.