Herbie Fully Loaded

Tonight Amy and I climbed into the bug and zipped on down to the Galaxy Drive-in Theatre just north of Ennis, Texas to catch the latest Herbie offering from Disney, Herbie Fully Loaded. As a driver of a New Beetle and a fan of old VWs and the original Love Bug movie, this movie was a must-see at the drive-in, especially since this movie will go down in history as the last one made by Lindsay Lohan before she lost her figure and her hotness by slimming down alarmingly to play the role of Skeletor in the upcoming He-Man flick. Even with the much discussed CG done to some of the scenes, Ms. Lohan's screen presence in this film is quite impressive.

The Galaxy Drive-in is a new facility, having opened in December 2004, with three screens that each show a double feature. Herbie was playing on screen 2 followed by Mr. & Mrs. Smith, an eye-candy double feature if there ever was one, particularly for VW fans with y chromosomes. Upon arrival, there were a couple dozen aircooleds at the drive-in all parked together; a good variety of bug, bus, ghia and thing models. The aircooled VW owners brought plenty of "frosty beverages" and were pretty rowdy by the time the movie started. Any mention of the words bug, Volkswagen or 1963 brought loud cheers and the phrase "these bugs are great, you just change the oil and it will run forever" nearly brought the house down, well except we were outside at the drive-in but you get my point.

Of course, since we were out in Ennis, the appearance of the various NASCAR drivers drew serious cheers and jeers from the various trucks with the number 3, 8, 18, 20, 88 and/or 24 decals in the back windows.

I thought, as a biased bug owner, that the movie was enjoyable; I mean it could have been a whole lot worse, there could have two musical montages set to Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend". I still prefer the old-school static Herbie to all of the CG expressions Herbie presently has but I guess that is the trend now, remake all of the old films and CG the heck out of them. I'm also going to have the classic "Herbie Theme" running through my head all week... you mean you don't have that on your iPod? Shame on you! I'm also still wondering what exactly they pulled out of the yellow 1.8T New Beetle's engine compartment to install on NASCAR Herbie. It looked like soem sort of external oil cooler, which my 1.8T doesn't appear to have. One final item, was the yellow with black stripes scheme on the New Beetle a tribute to the paint on the rival Thorndyke Special in the original Love Bug or merely a coincidence?

I think the drive-in afforded the most authentic Herbie experience (the Disney-sponsored advance premier in Calrsbad would have been even better). Sitting in one's bug with the Beach Boys playing over the opening sequence with the classic Herbie footage was very cool... even if it was still pretty darn hot out.