Herbie: Fully Loaded

I see lots of movies I probably wouldn't see otherwise because I do reviews. Sometimes, I'm really disappointed and sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised. This time, I got exactly what I expected.

The Herbie movies are dopey. They're about a car that thinks it's a person. Or, maybe if you want to be sinister, it's about a person cursed by being turned into a car. Or, possibly it's a case of botched reincarnation. Who cars, anyway?

This movie wastes the talents of two great stars, Michael Keaton and Matt Dillon, and is the latest stupid career vehicle for that flavor of last week, Lindsay Lohan, who was good in Mean Girls, and that's about it.

The story, such as it is, is about a girl in a racing stock racing family which has fallen on unlucky times. The son, who does the driving, may not have the native talent for the job. The daughter (Lohan) is a gal with well-known racing ability, but her father (Keaton) doesn't want her racing because her father doesn't want to lose a daughter after losing a wife (to cancer, if I recall correctly) because, he says, she reminds him so much of her mother.

As a graduation gift, he takes Lohan to a junkyard to get her a car, and she ends up taking...you guessed it. She soon discovered that this little care not only has a mind of its own but can go fast as hell. So fast, in fact, that she ends up beating legendary stock car driver Trip Murphy in a street race, which makes him angry and sets him up as the bad guy every movie like this needs.

We all know how this movie will turn out. Lohan will end up behind the wheel of Herbie in a big race at the end of he movie. Yadayadayada. At first, the movie wasn't funny at all, but as it got going I got a few laughs out of it. Not so many I can really recommend it, unless you are twelve or younger. So, take the kids for a fun time, but if you're a grown up, there are plenty of better movies to see.