Herbie Goes Bananas

I love Herbie - it's hard not to. However I can recognise how the four movies gradually get worse. This was the worst one. Now I'm not saying it was terrible, and I don't agree with a comment above that says "make the kids watch something else", but it was a disappointing effort.

The Love Bug is by far the best, closely followed by Herbie Rides Again. Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo is OK, but Bananas is not very good at all. If you're not a fan of Herbie movies, you won't like this.

5/10

The only good joke in this movie is the inside one: when Cloris Leachman's character sends Herbie for help, Harvey Korman turns to her and says, "It's a car, lady, not Lassie!" Leachman was part of the cast of LASSIE in 1957-1958, playing the original Ruth Martin. One wonders if the joke was specifically inserted with her in mind.

Poor Herbie went through as many owners as Lassie, too. This one is particularly lackluster, although the child lead is cute. The two young men who now apparently own Herbie don't even have enough screen presence to overshadow a small boy. On the other hand, Leachman and Korman must have needed the bucks.

The formerly jaunty little bug is dragged out for another run, this time a very feeble attempt at a franchise cash-in. It appears that the suits at Disney knew Herbie was due for the parts yard, and spent as little as possible to churn this out, hoping to make a quick buck off the few people who would see it on name recognition alone. Make the kids watch something else.

This was the last Herbie movie to my knowledge. If it wasn't the last, it was defintely the worst. What else do you call a movie when a Mexican child calls Herbie "ocho" ( he adds up Herbie famous number "53" and gets eight). Then this Mexican child does a horrible paint job and starts using Herbie to run a taxi service. In my humble opinion the only reason to watch this film is to see what sort cellouiod trash Disney was putting out before Michael Eisner took over.

Easily the weakest of the series, this is a film the Herbie franchise could have done without. Having a child as the nominal lead in an essentially adult role is a surprisingly common motif in children's movies; surprisingly, because more often than not it fails to work and it certainly fails here. Eight-year old taxi drivers? I think not, not even in Mexico. Our Paco is more annoying than lovable and I found myself rooting for the villains instead.

Clearly the writers are to blame for the mess - the cast is actually quite good, e.g. you cannot ask for much better villains than John Vernon, Alex Rocco and Richard Jaeckel, but they were fighting a loosing battle against a rotten script.

The best asset of the film is Harvey Korman who shows the right spirit, and is given the freedom to act out his madcap humour. Neither his routines nor his character fit very well into the story, but the story is so weak one does not care.