 In reviewing Herbie: Fully Loaded, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert makes what ordinarily would be considered an unpardonable sin for critics. He admits that he never saw The Love Bug, the original Disney film on which the sequel is based. He suggests that many adults probably won't be seeing this newest model either, writing, "The movie is pretty cornball. Little kids would probably enjoy it, but their older brothers and sisters will be rolling their eyes, and their parents will be using their iPods." Stephen Holden in the New York Times suggests it's difficult to write a serious review about such a film. It's "a perfectly silly movie for a silly season that in recent years has forgotten how to be this silly," he writes. And that may be the most favorable comment about the film. Ty Burr in the Boston Globe says that he found the movie "exactly as blandly noisy and inoffensively average as he thought it might be. So there's something to be said for lowering your expectations." Numerous critics refer to the large number of product-placement ads in the film, with Robert K. Elder writing in the Chicago Tribune: "The title Herbie: Fully Loaded perfectly describes the amount of product placements weighing down Disney's attempt to jump-start an old franchise. In an era when onscreen advertising is routine -- even unobtrusive when done well -- the makers of Herbie use every opportunity to stick a parade of Cheetos, Pepsi, Dupont, etc. in your face. Not only is this supremely distracting, but Disney's hyper-marketing even slows the dialogue as actors struggle to say such things as 'Nextel Cup Series' as if they're reading off cue cards held by stern-looking corporate lawyers." |
