Watched: 02/28/2025
Format: Disney+
Viewing: Unknown
Director: Robert Stevenson
Somehow we decided what we needed to do was watch the first Herbie movie, entitled The Love Bug (1968).
As a child, I have vague recollections of Herbie movies, and I believe my mom probably took me to see Herbie Goes Bananas in the theater during its 1980 release. And while the world of 1968 and 1980 seems a world away, it was 12 years apart, and the fourth Herbie installment.
Herbie is the adorable whitish Volkswagen Beetle that is why all Gen-X'ers have a fondness for the Beetle even if they don't actually want one. And I still get a thrill when I see someone in my local area who has a 90's-era Beetle they've painted with the blue and red racing stripes and number 53.
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| our friend, Herbie |
I just don't love this era of Disney's live-action comedies.
It's wild, because we're just four years past the timeless triumph of Mary Poppins (and I will cut you if you talk badly about Mary Poppins), and apparently what we're doing now is tricking kids into theaters with the promise of a funny car, and then having adults shout at each other, have cars consider suicide as a joke, have folks deny the existence of wonder that they themselves are experiencing, and inserting a heavy dollop of weird Chinese immigrant stereotypes, even as they introduce something of a hero in a Chinese immigrant businessman.
The Love Bug is about a race car driver, Dean Jones (a smaller version of Fred MacMurray, clocked up by 30%), who is not entirely washed up but sure is headed that way. He is ogling Michelle Lee's legs in a SF downtown window when he winds up entering the classy Euro Sportscar shop that is owned by David Tomlinson, who you remember as Mr. Banks.
Herbie, which is basically Christine's much nicer cousin, follows Dean Jones home, where he lives with Buddy Hackett, his mechanic. Well, wackiness ensues with a sentient car, but Dean Jones doesn't believe his car is alive despite all evidence to the contrary, and begins winning races, because Herbie is magic. Herbie is also very invested in Dean Jones getting with Mr. Banks' assistant, Michelle Lee.
Y'all there is so much yelling in this movie. It's like the director decided kids would somehow be bored of a magical car - maybe reasonably - and decided what we needed was shouting to keep us watching. It's a *weird* choice, because Jones is supposed to be our hero, but he kinda sucks. He's mean to Buddy Hackett, Herbie and even Michelle Lee. For young me, I suppose I registered this the same way I did my friends' parents who were yellers, and it doesn't feel like a win when he agrees Herbie is alive and his friend. It feels like the villain capitulaing. Which is punctuated by an extended scene where Jones pursues Herbie through the streets of San Francisco that lasts four times longer than necessary - but is shot weirdly very well.
The movie ends with a race that has some really funny moments (the bear in the car? Brilliant). And Michelle Lee and Dean Jones falling in love. Yay.
What does work in the movie is that this is all pre-CGI, so there are some wild practical things done. Like, when they want to indicate that Herbie is drunk from getting Irish coffee in his tank, they put wheels on the car at skewed angles to both visually show he's buzzing and make the car wobble as it drives. Funny!
For a movie for kids, it's oddly very much about trying to get Jones on Lee or vice-versa. In the way of family movies of the era, drinking is just part of it. It's 1968 in San Francisco, so there are hippies around, as well as squares, but it does feel like it's all aimed at the parents.
In the mode of Disney movies of this era, all of the scenes are too long, not particularly funny, and rely on *frustration of the audience* in ways that I just don't get. It's not tension building, it's just... people dragging out points we know they'll reach.
I didn't love it. You can see "oh, if they focused on the car, there's something here" - but the car doesn't talk.
I guess they tried to relaunch Herbie in 1997 with Bruce Campbell, and again in 2005 with Lindsay Lohan as the driver. I have seen neither of these, but there appears to not just be continuity between all of these movies, but cross-over with the Flubber movies, sharing characters. Disney was way out ahead of Marvel, I guess.
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