My Favorite Movie

List of Herbie's movies

Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005)

Herbie goes bananas (1980)

Herbie goes to Monte Carlo (1977)

Herbie rides again (1974)

Herbie the lovebug (1968)

Herbie: Fully Loaded Trailer

Like most of Disney’s best family films, the Herbie series didn’t start out geared solely for children. Released in 1968, The Love Bug featured well developed adult characters dealing with pretty heavy issues. In the film, race car driver Jim Douglas (Dean Jones) struggles with his own pride and a deep seated fear of failure. With Herbie, he wins races but he has to come to grips with the fact that it isn’t because of his driving. He pushes the strange little car away, screams at it, tries to replace it with a flashy racer. Herbie, in a fit of jealousy repeatedly rams Jim’s shiny new sports car, and after a bitter moment between the two (even though Herbie can’t talk, somehow he says volumes with a beep) Jim casts Herbie off into the streets on his own where the little car, in a gut wrenching scene tries to commit suicide. Pretty serious stuff for a movie about a self-aware Volkswagen. 

But that was part of what was great about those old movies, they took the character seriously. Herbie wasn’t some mysterious, magicked creature with eerie powers; he’s more like a normal car, one that just happens to have a whole lot of heart. He’s the little car that could, he wins races not because he has special super-powers, but because he’s got so much determination he wins through sheer force of will. That was always the beauty of Herbie; he wins because he wants it more than any other car on the race track. There’s never any real explanation for why Herbie became self aware, the brilliant Buddy Hackett as Tennessee Williams explains it simply as “something must have gotten caught up in the works”. When he says it, we know that something he’s talking about is pretty simple; it’s love. As a kid, watching all those Herbie movies I always assumed that Herbie was alive because we loved him. Like Tinkerbelle or the land of Fantasia, the Herbie of The Love Bug or Herbie Rides Again existed because we believed in him. Maybe that’s not a particularly logical explanation for how a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle could suddenly learn to drive itself, but it’s a pretty satisfying one. 

For this outing, Herbie’s been thrown for the first time into the world of NASCAR. Actually, that’s a move that makes some sense. NASCAR is huge and seeing Herbie take on a new type of racing could be fun. But once the car actually gets on the track, it’s bizarre. He doesn’t fit there and looks pretty uncomfortable amongst a bunch of stock cars. The races also aren’t very cinematic. Past Herbie movies had him racing in long, overland races against a motley collection of different vehicles. This presented plenty of opportunity for creative situations where Herb’s ability to drive himself might come in damn handy. Driving in circles for 500 miles in a race that lasts a couple of hours doesn’t have nearly the cinematic potential. The race footage is piss poor, and of course CGI comes into play again to make Herbie do the laughably ridiculous. 

Though Herbie: Fully Loaded is every bit as disappointing as you’d expect, there are times when it works. Whenever Herbie stops blinking and CGI’ing all over the place, he becomes good old number 53 again. The movie begins with a great opening sequence showing scenes from previous Herbie films, and a few newly made up video clips. The 80’s kid inside me grinned like an idiot when they show a three second shot of Herbie hanging out next to Michael Knight’s four-wheeled buddy K.I.T.T. for instance. Throw Airwolf into the picture hovering off in the distance while K.I.T.T. and Herbie are jumped by the General Lee and you’d have seen me go into a full on nerd-spasm. The movie isn’t completely without heart, and no matter how much CGI they slather on the Bug that could, this movie can’t completely destroy the character. Good old Herbie is in there somewhere, and seeing that number 53 on screen again in any form is a nostalgic treat for anyone who had him as a fixture in their childhood. Sadly, gone is the magic that made the Herbie films great family movies, in its place is the lame trappings of a modern, dumbed-down kids movie.