Among my Christmas presents this year was a gift card to Target, which I
used to buy the game Apples to Apples. Last year, I also got a Target
gift card, with which I purchased a four-pack of Herbie movies. I spread
out my viewings of the movies, leaving the last for this year. The
title: Herbie Goes Bananas. What can I say? I'm a fruitcake! You
almost have to be to get such a kick out of the idea of a little
Volkswagen beetle with a heart of gold and an ability to drive himself
around town. Herbie sure seems to know what he's doing, despite the
nerve-racking nature of some of his death-defying stunts; I wouldn't
mind having him as my own personal chauffeur. Especially if he came with
that nifty theme song.
But a lot of people don't agree with
me. The movies, made during the 70s and 80s, back when Disney was still
churning out innocuous live-action family films, are very G-rated, heavy
on the corny special effects, marked in some cases by gaping plot holes
(beyond the obvious "Wait! Cars aren't alive!" deal). I made the rather
grievous error of semi-forcing Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo on my
brother over the summer. He was not impressed. In fact, his string of
cynical comments left me so jaded that I gave the movie three stars.
Poor Herbie! If I wrote the review today, I'm sure I'd rate it much
higher, but I'll leave my original rating as a reminder to myself that
some movies are best enjoyed only in certain company.
My mom was the only one I subjected to Herbie Goes Bananas.
We popped it in late the other night and fell asleep watching it.
Tonight I skipped ahead and watched the ending I missed the other day.
It's all gloriously cheesy, with hardy little Herbie always saving the
day, much more in control of the situation than his human counterparts.
It obviously was geared toward children, probably more than the other
installments because this one features Paco (Joaquin Garay III), an
adorable Spanish-speaking scamp whose pick-pocketing skill is unmatched
and whose affectionate nature is wasted on such a cut-throat living. He
just wants somebody to love, and he finds that someone in "Ocho," the
name he chooses for Herbie when he stows away inside him early in the
movie. After they are reunited later, a chorus of children sing a syrupy
song about friendship whose lyrics include the cheerful line "I bet you
a banana manana you'll have a new friend!" If Nathan had been watching
with me, I think he would have hit the mute button.
Even I
admit the song is a bit much, but the rest of the movie is pretty solid
entertainment. Jim Douglas has passed Herbie on to new owners again; I
don't know why he bothers, since Herbie somehow always seems to end up
back with him. But the boys who inherit him are a good couple of chaps.
His nephew Pete (Stephen Burns) is a dreamboat and a mighty soft touch,
easily taken in by Paco's practiced routine, while his toothy compadre
D. J. (Charles Martin Smith) seems just a bit more world-wise. It had
been so long since I'd seen this movie that when we first started
watching, I couldn't recall if they were the good guys or the bad guys,
but their actions soon showed them to be men of character.
They're also men of ambition, having traveled to South America to pick
up Herbie and drive him to victory in a major Brazilian race. Too bad
for them that they get mixed up with Paco, who tangles with a group of
troublemaking treasure seekers led by the sinister Prindle (John
Vernon). Herbie takes it upon himself to protect the kid, which leads to
several embarrassing situations for the lads, particularly when Herbie
arouses the ire of the overbearing Captain Blythe (Harvey Korman),
captain of the ship on which the young men appeal to their flirtatious
aunt Louise (Cloris Leachman) for funds to back their entry into the big
race. Problematically, Herbie's antics so enrage the captain that he
forces the little car to walk the plank, of all cruel things. But we all
know that's not enough to keep a good car down!
Interwoven
into the plot are two love stories, neither of which is too prominent.
The first involves Aunt Louise's rather ridiculous crush on Captain
Blythe, an overdramatic sea dog whose only true loves are the open water
and a fine vessel in full sail. The second is between Pete and Melissa
(Elyssa Davalos), a severe young doctoral candidate who always keeps her
hair up tight in a bun and her eyes shielded behind enormous glasses.
While the first never seems to be reciprocal, the second could be,
except that it begins merely as a means of winning Aunt Louise's favor,
as she is determined to play matchmaker for her traveling companion, who
has the capacity to be both pretty and vivacious. Once Melissa finds
this out, she is none too pleased, feeling as though she has been used,
even though Pete's feelings toward her have changed.
The main
action involves Herbie, though, getting himself out of close scrapes
while getting the humans closely associated with him into them. He zooms
along at top speed. He floats for miles in the water, becoming covered
with rust. He plays chicken with a bull - and wins! And of course, as
per the film's title, he allows himself to be decorated with bananas in
hopes that will throw the bad guys off his scent; later, when the
scoundrels show up anyway, he resumes his attempts to thwart them, this
time lobbing bananas at them as they try to get away with a massive
wheel of pilfered Inca gold. It's quite the slippery spectacle. Other
than those small scenes, plus that line in the song, there's little in
the movie to suggest the title in any literal sense, but he certainly
does "go bananas" throughout the movie if we're talking about acting in a
crazily silly way.
We never actually get to see Herbie's big
race; the film ends just before it's about to start, with Paco in the
driver's seat in a shiny racing suit, having just explained to D.J. that
he calls Herbie "Ocho" because "five and three make eight - everyone
knows that"! The closest thing to an actual race is the bullfight, but
that doesn't bother me much since every major Herbie race tends to play
out pretty much the same way as the climactic event in The Love Bug.
Herbie's most interesting to me as a sort of metallic Lassie, exuding
friendship and coming to the rescue of an assortment of disaster-prone
humans. We get plenty of that here, plus the sprightly theme song, so
who am I to complain about a few corny moments and pesky plot holes?
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