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Herbie: Fully Loaded
It’s Spirit ... with a car! It’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ... with 60s slapstick and a teenybopper soundtrack! This movie already had a spot reserved in my DVD collection ‘cos of the presence of Lindsay Lohan, but I’ve gotta say, Lindsay is just icing on this movie, it would’ve been great even without her.
I remember that I used to love the old Herbie movies when I was a kid, but I have no recollection of the movies themselves. Having said that though, this new version felt like it hit all the same notes, and to me that was pretty surprising, I figured they’d totally overhaul the idea and modernise, hip it up, etc. – if for no other reason that I just couldn’t imagine Lindsay Lohan in a movie like the original Herbies.
My only complaint is they didn’t use the original theme tune nearly enough … but it’s very cool that they used it at all, I guess, and when they do use it, this movie is absolutely awesome (I think the new remix will probably be on my second “best of 2005” playlist). I’ve gotta say something about Michael Keaton though … I mean first First Daughter and now this – he’s great in both these movies, he’s great in everything, but these little father roles are kind of insulting. I’m really really praying he gets to be Joker in the next Batman movie, I realise it’s a long shot, but it makes so much sense and it’d make my decade, lol.
I was about to say I guess this is the last ginger Lindsay movie but I just went to the IMDb and there are pics from Just My Luck up and yay she’s at least one more ginger flick to come lol. Dye your hair back, Lindsay, it’s totally you :-p
Final sidenote: this movie might finally have made me interested in Pixar’s Cars. I’m not remotely interested in cars and stuff in real life, but like I guess mention Chitty or Herbie and I get a little excited. I’ve always loved cinematic car chases, and even if Cars is just a feature length race with crazy camera angles and a good score, even then it could be pretty cool.
July 2nd, 2006 at 8:00 pm
[...] The real question with movies like this has to be first, how good could it really have been, honestly? The original Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers were on the whole no masterpieces in themselves, especially the sequels. Honestly the only things I missed in this remake are the things you can’t replace – Peter Sellers’ performance and Blake Edwards’ sense of class. Henry Mancini’s score is used pretty well (better than the passing glimpse we got of the Herbie theme in Fully Loaded), but Christophe Beck’s techno updating of the music in places totally betrays the obvious (not to mention futile) attempt to bring it to the kids of today. Likewise, the production design, right down to the look of the characters themselves (oh, look, it’s Steve Martin with something under his nose), could’ve used a little more dedication. Kevin Kline and Martin do a decent enough job, and Jean Reno escapes the movie entirely untarnished, while Beyoncé simply does Goldmember again. The real success here is director Shawn Levy’s, and I knew he could pull this movie off the day I saw Just Married. The slapstick here brought me near close to tears in places, especially the rehash of the classic globe gag. So aside from the obvious absence of Sellers and the irreplacable 60s vibe, honestly? This was as good as it was ever going to be, and I wouldn’t mind another helping. [...]