Film: 
DVD: 
Written by Thomas Lennon, Ben Garant, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, based on characters by Gordon Buford
Directed by Angela Robinson
Starring Lindsay Lohan, Michael Keaton, Matt Dillon, Breckin Meyer, Justin Long
Features:
- Director Commentary
- Bloopers
- Deleted Scenes
- Alternate Title Opening
- A Day at the Races
- Breaking the Rules: The Stunts from Herbie: Fully Loaded
- Lindsay Lohan Music Video: “First”
Released by: Disney Home Entertainment
Rating: G
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes
My Advice: Rent it
[ad#longpost]Herbie hasn’t had a very good run of things since being forced out of the racing circuit. In fact, he’s found himself at a junkyard. Enter the Peyton family. Maggie (Lohan) has just graduated from college and her father, Ray (Keaton) owns a NASCAR racing team. Maggie’s brother Ray, Jr. (Meyer) is the driver for the company, and is probably why the company hasn’t been doing so well lately. Anyway, Herbie winds up in her life and, of course, changes everything and gets himself into a NASCAR race in the process.
If you are a Herbie purist, you already avoided this movie and you need to continue to do so. However, if you are a bit more open-minded, you might actually see that this movie stays relatively close to the tone of the original series and you might have a decent time. Lohan is surprisingly believable as the daughter of a down-and-out racing team owner and her relationships with the other characters on screen are great. Thankfully, the tightest relationship is the one with Long, who is absolutely hilarious.
My biggest beef with this movie is the super animated Herbie. He suddenly has a lot more facial expressions than he ever had in the first set of movies. I guess this is where the Herbie purist comes out in me. It just bothers me that the director didn’t feel that she could tell the story and have it focus around the car without having it mug for the camera. Trust the actors around the car to help convey the supposed emotion of the car.
The DVD is decent. I’m thankful that there is a commentary track, although the director spent a lot of time focusing on the little editing mistakes that she consciously left in the movie. For people who are not involved with show business of any kind might find this kind of charming, but for anyone who has been involved with putting a show of any kind together, it’s just embarrassing. At least the Gag Reel makes up for it; it’s a lot of fun. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it’s too short. There was some funny stuff going on with Long and Lohan that I would have liked to see more of. The deleted scenes, as with most, are pretty much useless and the alternate title opening was just a waste of money. The featurettes are pretty much the fluff that you would expect from a Disney DVD that is still geared toward early teens.
I’m not even going to comment on the Lohan music video.
Welllll…other than to say that I’m sick to death of Disney trying to turn any kid star that they get into a pop star (a la Britney Spears). They don’t ever let go of the hope, no matter how badly it goes for the talent and how much damage they are doing to their future career in the process.
Anyway, if you like a good no-brainer movie, you can do a lot worse than this one. Pick it up as a rental sometime when there’s nothing else in the store.
