Delayed Reaction: Herbie Fully Loaded

The Pitch: What's a property that we, the Walt Disney Corporation, have that we haven't used in a while? Yes, Herbie the Lovebug. And who's nicer than that Lindsay Lohan girl? She's America's Sweeheart. You saw Mean Girls.

How I Came Into It: The was being made toward the beginning of Lindsay Lohan's career self-sabotage, a train wreck that slowly played out over the two busiest years of her career. This was her follow up to Mean Girls and her partying was already causing issues with the production schedule. What I'm trying to say is that the game inside this movie is guessing how drunk Lohan was in a given scene.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) Technically, Disney put together a cast that I like. Michael Keaton never went away. He just spent way too long making movies like this. And Justin Long gets to use his nervous energy well here. Cheryl Hines, Matt Dillon, and Thomas Lennon are all comedic actors who get a couple chances to show off. This is a perfectly adequate call sheet for a Disney movie.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: The story makes no sense. After applying my "One Big Leap"* principle - Herbie is a car that's alive - the movie is still riddled with holes. The beginning of the movie established that Herbie has been forgotten because he's obsolete, then he's somehow good enough to win a drag race against a NASCAR champion. If Herbie's helping Lohan the whole time, how is this at all empowering to her? How did she get an internship with ESPN? Why did she ride a skateboard to her college graduation? How could Michael Keaton not get better work than this? There's just too many questions and not enough sufficient answers.

*One Big Leap refers to the one crazy thing that I allow a movie before I start picking at it. Sometimes this is a big coincidence (ex. the protagonist's one true love happens to marry her arch-nemesis) or more often the high concept pitch (ex.Person X can travel back in time). After accepting this one big story point, the rest of it needs to make sense.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend