Herbie, We Hardly Knew Ye

I loved the Herbie movies when I was a kid. How much, you ask? There was one time that I became absolutely distraught when my parents decided we weren’t going over to a friend’s house who had cable (probably because of something I’d done), and I knew for a fact that a Herbie movie was playing on the Disney channel that night. My parents might as well have poked out my eyes for all I cared at that moment. Watching those movies, be it on a rented VCR or over at said cable-possessing friend’s, was the absolute best way to spend a day as far as my childhood self was concerned.

Now, I realize that there’s a danger inherent to revisiting childhood favorites. Namely, that those favorites, which were so perfect when you were 10, may actually turn out to suck now that you’re pushing 30. And by suck, I mean suck hard. As much I loved the little bug back in the day, I fully realize that, were I to watch the Dean Jones/Buddy Hackett masterpiece today, I might very well hang my head in shame and wonder just what in the world I was thinking 20 years ago.

All that being said, I think I felt a little piece of me die as I watched the trailer for Herbie Fully Loaded (don’t ask me why I was watching it in the first place) and saw just how much Disney had turned yet another one of my childhood icons into a big, fat, steaming turd, complete with toilet-worthy CGI, some equally toilet-worthy Crazy Town, and Lindsey Lohan to boot.

Perhaps I was too naïve, but be honest… you didn’t expect it to be that bad either, did you?