In connection with our birthday festivities, we took seven giggly girls to see Herbie:  Fully Loaded yesterday.  If you can keep yourself from being irritated by the constant references to ESPN (part of the Disney family) and wondering how much other companies paid for their product placements (Bass Pro Shops, Home Depot and, of course, Volkswagen), then Herbie is a really good family movie.  It's rated G, which is a rarity these days of trying to market to the tweener segment, and it is almost devoid of the double-entendres of the Shrek genre that seem innocuous when you buy the DVD for your five year-old but a little concerning three years later.

I liked the story, but the real appeal of the movie is Matt Dillon.  I'm not sure when he became a villain, but he is great at it.  He's just evil enough to be a villain, but cute enough not to be too scary.  The movie also is a good ad for the VW beetle.  It did make me want to go trade in my mom-mobile for a cute bug.

We rented The Love Bug this weekend to get into the Herbie mood, and interestingly, the old movie had much more car-related stunts.  Herbie in his prime was much more acrobatic and energetic than Herbie 35 years later.  I would think that with technological advancements, a Herbie movie now could have Herbie doing just about anything, but Herbie has tamed way down.  I can see why the producers wouldn't opt for a completely computer generated car, but I'm not sure why Herbie today is less human than before.  Maybe Lindsay Lohan didn't want to be upstaged by a bug.

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