Herbie Fully Loaded (dir. Angela Robinson, 2005)
Angela Robinson was best known for the queer schoolgirl actioner D.E.B.S., and went on to produce “The L Word” and “True Blood.” Despite her pedigree, Herbie Fully Loaded has no lesbian subtext.
Herbie Fully Loaded is notable for many small reasons. For one, It was co-written by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant from “The State,” who authored a hilarious and helpful book on how to make a lot of money in Hollywood as a screenwriter-for-hire. I appreciate their subversive and odd sense of humor, so I was hoping something wacky might leak into Herbie Fully Loaded. I could sense some strangeness coming from the flick, but I feel that may have been me projecting. The film is very safe, and still bares a G-rating, which seems to be rare for any live-action films these days. This was also the final successful film that Lindsay Lohan would make before her public antics started to chew into her professional life. Lohan was a hot young star around this time, known for friendly and clever teen comedy-dramas like Mean Girls and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. She was only 18 when she made Herbie Fully Loaded, and was still full of promise. She was young, pretty, healthy, and had just released a record. It was all ahead of her. It would be only two years later that Lohan would become so ensconced with drinking, bad driving, the law and rehab, that she would stoop to starring in trashy pseudo-giallos like I Know Who Killed Me. For the last eight years, Lohan has been something of a tabloid punchline. Me? I’m still pulling for her, and still hope that she’ll come out on top. She does at the very least seem to have a sense of humor about her brushes with the law. The film was a stinkburger, but she had the wherewithal to parody her image in Scary Movie V.
So as far as I can tell, Herbie Fully Loaded kind of ignores the events of The Love Bug 1997. The film opens with a montage of Herbie’s rise and eventual fall, complete with clips from the previous films. We see headlines about how Herbie won at Monte Carlo, and how he was a national celebrity. He went to Studio 54, and was friends with KITT from “Knight Rider.” Eventually, though, Herbie started losing races, and was sold to yet another scrap dealer. The story beats in Herbie Fully Loaded are actually very similar to The Love Bug 1997.
Our main character is Maggie “Mags” Peyton (Lohan, perhaps named after Peyton Reed, director of The Love Bug 1997) who is the youngest in a car racing dynasty, and who has just graduated high school. Her dad (Michael Keaton) has been giving all his attention to Mags’ brother Ray Jr. (Breckin Meyer), so her graduation present of whatever junker she wants seems like an afterthought. She chooses a little rundown Volkswagen Beetle with a note in the glove box. “Take care of Herbie,” it says. It is never revealed who left that note.
Herbie, by the way, is way more expressive this time around. Thanks to CGI effects, Herbie can now skid along rails, and has a pair of eyelid-like headlight shades that can blink and wink. Herbie seems to talk with his horn a lot more, and is equipped with a full set of hydraulics. The ultimate effect is kind of cute, but I still think that Herbie is far too expressive for his own good. Herbie is a living car, yes, but I like him better when he’s a little more inscrutable. I don’t need to see his eyelids to make me project character onto him. What’s more, there are a lot of POV shots from Herbie’s “eyes.” The film is a little more explicit.
Eventually, as in many of the previous films, Herbie is fixed a bit so that he may show off in public, leading to his owner falling in love with him. It’s refreshing to see a young woman in the lead role. There are female gearheads out there, and they’re finally being represented by people other than whiny “Matlock” actresses. Mags is a fun and energetic character. Here’s a fun bit of trivia. Evidently Lindsay Lohan was considered too busty for the role, and the filmmakers decided to shrink her chest using digital effects in post-production. You won’t notice the shrinking effects going in, but you’ll see it if you’re looking for it. Eventually Mags is given a rival in the form of Matt Dillon, and, again, the evil driver will try to win Herbie in a race just for the pleasure of dismantling him. This is the third time in the series that plot point has been used.
The idiom of car racing has changed immensely since 1997, as the popularity of NASCAR exploded since then. As such, car culture is much different. In the previous film, car culture seemed relegated wither to erudite mechanics and engineers who would build engines from scratch and who could drive in classy European races like Monte Carlo, and enthused teen hot-rodders who liked to play chicken. Now, in 2005, the erudite engineers are considered a smallish cult, and the bulk of car nuts tend to gather in ultra-commercialized arenas to watch sponsored cars race in a circle. It seems less classy to me, but there you are. The big race in Herbie Fully Loaded will be a NASCAR race.
Mags has a love interest in the form of an old high school friend played by Justin Long, and there is a long stretch of the film devoted to her disguising herself as a male racer named Max for some reason. The story is largely disposable, but for its energy and sincerity. I liked the spirited performances, the nice cast, and the upbeat G-rated tone. Yes, I even liked Lohan. What I did not appreciate was the ultra-obvioius musical cues that dotted this film like a pop culture minefield. Every scene seems to start with a familiar rock standard that you hate even when it’s not in a movie. I won’t list the entire soundtrack, but I will say that both “Born to be Wild” and “Walking on Sunshine” are used unironically.
One more note: The New Beetle had been introduced since the last Herbie movie, which meant Herbie had to eventually come face-to-face with one. I would think a 1963 soft-top Volkswagen Type 1 would be a little baffled by the lightweight elongated suburban creature that The Beetle evolved into, but Herbie instead falls in love. The cute joke about that: “She’s too young for you, Herbie.”
