Herbie Goes Bananas
Written by Don Tait, based on the novel Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford
Directed By Vincent McEveety
USA, 1980, imdb
Listen to our Mousterpiece Cinema Herbie Goes Bananas podcast or read Josh‘s extended thoughts about the film.
*****
Some films acquire a bad reputation that sticks like a bad smell, driving potential viewers away before they ever see it. Everyone knows that Alien³ and Alien Resurrection are terrible even especially those who have never seen the film. This fate happens particularly to notorious bombs – especially to films that (temporarily) kill off franchises. There is a perverse feedback loop in place, the film bombed because no one went to see it, and since the film bombed it must be terrible, so no one wants to watch it.
But this is confusing quality with popularity. They can be linked, but films bombing may result from any number of factors...
Written by Don Tait, based on the novel Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford
Directed By Vincent McEveety
USA, 1980, imdb
Listen to our Mousterpiece Cinema Herbie Goes Bananas podcast or read Josh‘s extended thoughts about the film.
*****
Some films acquire a bad reputation that sticks like a bad smell, driving potential viewers away before they ever see it. Everyone knows that Alien³ and Alien Resurrection are terrible even especially those who have never seen the film. This fate happens particularly to notorious bombs – especially to films that (temporarily) kill off franchises. There is a perverse feedback loop in place, the film bombed because no one went to see it, and since the film bombed it must be terrible, so no one wants to watch it.
But this is confusing quality with popularity. They can be linked, but films bombing may result from any number of factors...
- 7/10/2012
- by Michael Ryan
- SoundOnSight
Herbie Goes Bananas
Directed by Vincent McEveety
Written by Gordon Buford and Don Tait
USA, 1980
I cannot believe that a movie as wrongheaded and idiotic as Herbie Goes Bananas exists. Herbie Goes Bananas is so bad, it makes Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo look like the combined 1940s output of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (better known as The Archers), from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to The Small Back Room. In fact, I’m insulting The Archers’ films by even including them in the same sentence as anything pertaining to Herbie Goes Bananas. I could, frankly, spend this entire column cataloguing the many things in the world that are more enjoyable, funny, exciting, and lively than Herbie Goes Bananas. But while it’d be fun…well, I’m not sure how to finish that sentence. Let’s just assume the alternate-universe column where I tell you exactly...
Directed by Vincent McEveety
Written by Gordon Buford and Don Tait
USA, 1980
I cannot believe that a movie as wrongheaded and idiotic as Herbie Goes Bananas exists. Herbie Goes Bananas is so bad, it makes Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo look like the combined 1940s output of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (better known as The Archers), from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to The Small Back Room. In fact, I’m insulting The Archers’ films by even including them in the same sentence as anything pertaining to Herbie Goes Bananas. I could, frankly, spend this entire column cataloguing the many things in the world that are more enjoyable, funny, exciting, and lively than Herbie Goes Bananas. But while it’d be fun…well, I’m not sure how to finish that sentence. Let’s just assume the alternate-universe column where I tell you exactly...
- 5/26/2012
- by Josh Spiegel
- SoundOnSight
Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo
Written By Arthur Alsberg and Don Nelson, based on the novel Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford
Directed By Vincent McEveety
USA, 1977, imdb
Listen to our Mousterpiece Cinema Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo podcast or read Josh‘s extended thoughts about the film.
*****
From the time that “Disney’s Folly” paid off and the first-ever animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, became a hit, Disney (the company that Walt created) has been in the business of telling fairy tales. What we sometimes forget is that fairy tales can be stories that reassure children, but also stories that scare the bejeezus out of them. Case in point, the first film that I ever saw: Walt Disney’s Bambi, a film that also terrified Stephen King as a child.
The Herbie series is much more on the reassuring side of the spectrum than the scary side,...
Written By Arthur Alsberg and Don Nelson, based on the novel Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford
Directed By Vincent McEveety
USA, 1977, imdb
Listen to our Mousterpiece Cinema Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo podcast or read Josh‘s extended thoughts about the film.
*****
From the time that “Disney’s Folly” paid off and the first-ever animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, became a hit, Disney (the company that Walt created) has been in the business of telling fairy tales. What we sometimes forget is that fairy tales can be stories that reassure children, but also stories that scare the bejeezus out of them. Case in point, the first film that I ever saw: Walt Disney’s Bambi, a film that also terrified Stephen King as a child.
The Herbie series is much more on the reassuring side of the spectrum than the scary side,...
- 4/2/2012
- by Michael Ryan
- SoundOnSight
Herbie Rides Again
Written by Bill Walsh, based on the novel Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford
Directed by Robert Stevenson
USA, 1974, imdb
Listen to the Mousterpiece podcast about Herbie Rides Again or read Josh’s extended thoughts about the film!
*****
“The first rule of all drive-in sequels: make the same damn movie you made the first time!”
-Joe Bob Briggs
Herbie Rides Again stands proudly alongside Halloween III: Season of the Witch as the two films that most deliberately break the sequel rule. It is debatable which is more cruel. Halloween III has no Michael Myers (and for that matter no witches) but never explains why. No doubt many in the audience when it was first released must have been wondering when Michael Myers was going to show, right up until the moment the film ended.
While discarding most of what made the first film work: Dean Jones as racer Jim Douglas,...
Written by Bill Walsh, based on the novel Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford
Directed by Robert Stevenson
USA, 1974, imdb
Listen to the Mousterpiece podcast about Herbie Rides Again or read Josh’s extended thoughts about the film!
*****
“The first rule of all drive-in sequels: make the same damn movie you made the first time!”
-Joe Bob Briggs
Herbie Rides Again stands proudly alongside Halloween III: Season of the Witch as the two films that most deliberately break the sequel rule. It is debatable which is more cruel. Halloween III has no Michael Myers (and for that matter no witches) but never explains why. No doubt many in the audience when it was first released must have been wondering when Michael Myers was going to show, right up until the moment the film ended.
While discarding most of what made the first film work: Dean Jones as racer Jim Douglas,...
- 3/1/2012
- by Michael Ryan
- SoundOnSight
The Love Bug
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, based on the book Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford
1968, USA, imdb
As I mentioned during the Mousterpiece Cinema podcast about The Love Bug, when I was a very young boy – about 3 or 4, my parents would drive to Ndg from the Laurentians to visit my grandparents. Once there, my Bompa would take me down to his basement garage, wave his hands, intone dramatically “Abracadabra” and the garage doors would open. Then he would wave his hands and proclaim “Abracadabra” to close them back up. I thought he was quite a magician… and he was! At least in the Arthur C. Clarke sense that, “Any sufficiently advanced technology,” in this case an automatic garage-door opener in 1970, “is indistinguishable from magic.”
This is the key to the Herbie films. Children see a sentient car and believe it to...
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, based on the book Car, Boy, Girl by Gordon Buford
1968, USA, imdb
As I mentioned during the Mousterpiece Cinema podcast about The Love Bug, when I was a very young boy – about 3 or 4, my parents would drive to Ndg from the Laurentians to visit my grandparents. Once there, my Bompa would take me down to his basement garage, wave his hands, intone dramatically “Abracadabra” and the garage doors would open. Then he would wave his hands and proclaim “Abracadabra” to close them back up. I thought he was quite a magician… and he was! At least in the Arthur C. Clarke sense that, “Any sufficiently advanced technology,” in this case an automatic garage-door opener in 1970, “is indistinguishable from magic.”
This is the key to the Herbie films. Children see a sentient car and believe it to...
- 1/26/2012
- by Michael Ryan
- SoundOnSight
The Love Bug
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi
Starring Dean Jones, David Tomlinson, Michele Lee, Buddy Hackett
Live-action films at Walt Disney Pictures have always occupied an interesting place, not only within cinema as a whole, but within the company. Even during the dark days of the 1960s and 1970s—basically the period from when Walt Disney passed away in 1966 to when Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg joined the company in 1984—live-action was a moneymaker without being anywhere near as iconic as the animation output. Granted, the studio often fell back on re-releasing its older animated films, but they treated animation as something to be respected, while live-action was just there to get kids in the theater.
In some ways, I wonder if that’s why Walt Disney Pictures was able to have such a tight-knit system comprised of directors, writers, composers, and so on.
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi
Starring Dean Jones, David Tomlinson, Michele Lee, Buddy Hackett
Live-action films at Walt Disney Pictures have always occupied an interesting place, not only within cinema as a whole, but within the company. Even during the dark days of the 1960s and 1970s—basically the period from when Walt Disney passed away in 1966 to when Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg joined the company in 1984—live-action was a moneymaker without being anywhere near as iconic as the animation output. Granted, the studio often fell back on re-releasing its older animated films, but they treated animation as something to be respected, while live-action was just there to get kids in the theater.
In some ways, I wonder if that’s why Walt Disney Pictures was able to have such a tight-knit system comprised of directors, writers, composers, and so on.
- 1/21/2012
- by Josh Spiegel
- SoundOnSight
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