Jun 22, 2005 10:29 am US/Central
Herbie: Fully Loaded
Richard Roeper: "Skip It"
Richard Roeper
(CBS 2)
As young actresses go, paparazzi magnet Lindsay Lohan isn't a world-class beauty like Emily Rossum, and she's not getting the scripts sent to Scarlett Johansson, but she has done good work in films such as "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday."
But Lohan takes a giant step back in the dopey "Herbie: Fully Loaded."
This is a product-placement movie gone wild. There's a commercial contained within nearly every frame.
In this update of one of the stupidest hits from the 1960s, Lohan is Maggie Peyton, daughter of a burnt-out racing legend played by Michael Keaton, who looks like he's constipated. For Maggie's college graduation present, Dad takes her shopping at the junkyard.
As in the original, Herbie is a VW Bug with loads of horsepower, a devilish personality and a sense of humor straight from the Three Stooges playbook.
When "Herbie: Fully Loaded" comes out on DVD, I'd like to see a featurette with Matt Dillon and Michael Keaton talking about what it's like to do such good work in the 1980s and 1990s, only to wind up playing second banana to Lindsay Lohan in a bad remake of a bad movie.
"Herbie: Fully Loaded" is rated G, and I guess that wacky little car might amuse small children, but the special effects are surprisingly weak and the story is beyond clichéd. Skip It.
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