Herbie Goes Bananas (1980)

I know it’s because they had several projects in the works at the same time, but so far it feels like every time we get something new and exciting, the next movie we’re right back to spinning our wheels. It’s driving me bananas.

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You know you’re in for a rough day when director Vincent McEveety and writer Don Tait pair up. They’ve done some okay movies individually but together, they churn out stuff like Castaway Cowboy and Matecumbe. I don’t want to be glad this was Tait’s final film buuut…. you know, what I am. I’m gonna say it. He’s still alive as far as I can tell so I’m not speaking ill of the dead. And I’m not wrong to be apprehensive. This movie was a box-office bomb, widely considered the worst film in the Herbie franchise. It so thoroughly convinced audiences and the Disney studio that the poor little car’s antics had gotten old that it effectively killed the franchise until the 2005 reboot. So we have that to look forward to. Yay.

STORY

We’re heading south of the border to follow Pete Stancheck and his mechanic DJ Johns on their trip to pick up an old car. Pete’s Uncle Jim left it for him and told him absolutely nothing else about it. There’s a lot wrong with that already – don’t warn him that the car is alive, or tell him it’s called Herbie, or anything. Just “I have a car for you, go pick it up in another country because reasons”. Also, Jim Douglas really needs to stop abandoning the magical car with attachment issues. As they head to the garage where poor Herbie’s waiting, they meet a little Mexican boy named Paco who promises to show them around. He’s very friendly, slinging his arms around their backs and cheerfully giving them directions to the garage. DJ even remarks that it’s nice to see someone just being nice without looking for anything. And of course, we cut to Paco laughing with their wallets in hand.

Meanwhile, a man with the super-intimidating name of Prindle looks through what I think is a Viewmaster at a fabulous Incan treasure. I’m pretty sure my millenial is showing but I have no idea what that thing is. His two associates whose names I didn’t bother to catch, warn that if they’re not very careful about acquiring it, they’ll be locked up forever. But Prindle is very careful to assure them in no uncertain terms that he has the only copy of the film strip with the location of the gold. So long as nothing happens to it, they’re home free. Gee, I wonder what could happen next. It’s not like we’ve had this same heist plot dozens of times, including in the last Herbie movie.

When Pete and DJ get to the garage, they just can’t believe that this broken-down old Volkswagen is Uncle Jim’s racecar. It’s not like the first three movies showed he’s internationally famous or anything. The garage owner explained that Herbie won dozens of races, and the only reason he lost the last one was because he witnessed Giselle the Lancia crash. She never got back up, so Herbie was too heartbroken to race again and Jim just dumped him. YIKES. There is a lot to unpack there and I don’t have time to address any of it but WOW Jim is the worst. Also, this is the only time in the entire movie where anyone actually refers to the car as Herbie. Pete takes the keys but he’s still not convinced. Still, it runs well enough, so if nothing else, hey, new car. He goes to pay the man and finds his wallet missing! So he asks the guy if he can take it for a “test drive” and off they go to find that kid.

Paco finds Prindle and his goons leaving a fancy hotel and offers to carry their bags. Prindle is so annoyed he pushes the kid into traffic which… yikes. Paco is annoying but that seems like a little much. But not only is he fine, he got Prindle’s wallet and the film inside. Who could have seen that coming? Time for a wacky chase scene! Both Pete and DJ and Prindle’s guys set out in search of the wallet thief. After a lot of unfunny nonsense, Pete spots him across the street and grabs him before he can stuff their cash down his shirt. They scold Paco but leave once they’ve gotten their wallets back. Prindle and Co get there a little too late, after Paco has shoved their wallet into a mailbox, so the chase starts all over again.

For reasons unknown, Herbie decides to go out on a limb for this random kid. He rides up and pops his hood, inviting Paco to hop inside. Paco doesn’t question this at all, waiting perfectly still as our good guys get into Herbie to go pay and leave. But the bad guys spot Paco as he gets into his hiding spot and try to stop him. As Herbie pops a wheelie and zooms out of there, we get our obligatory “omg the car is driving itself!” moment that we’ve had in every Herbie movie. It’s a short one, though, and confusion quickly gives way to the euphoria of having a real race car after all! So they make plans to enter Herbie in the Grand Primeo in Brazil.

First they have to get to Brazil, so they decide to go in style on a cruise ship called the Sun Princess. I’m pretty sure most cruise ships aren’t equipped to transport cars, and I’m also sure you don’t haul cars on deck in a net like you’re fishing for sharks, but here we are. Paco peeks out just to remind us he’s still there and Prindle and his men lurk on the docks plotting to get that kid and the filmstrip he stole when the ship docks in Panama. On board the ship, we meet Captain Blythe, an absolute lunatic who’s enthusiastically terrifying his dinner guests with tales of the good old days when a ship’s captain could murder and torture women with impunity. The movie clearly thinks this is hilarious but I am deeply, deeply disturbed. Louise Trends, on the other hand, is… shall we say intrigued? Lovestruck? Way, way, waaaay too into it?

Her niece, Melissa, has no interest in any of these shenanigans. She just wants to eat her dinner in peace. But when Pete and DJ walk into the room, Louise spots an opportunity and ushers them to sit at their table. While the two nice young gentlemen walk over, Louise reaches over and undoes the top two buttons on Melissa’s blouse, which Melissa does not appreciate. Louise tries to coach her on flirting with the nice young race car drivers but she’s having none of it. She’s a kill joy and Louise is just looking out for her so she doesn’t end up an old maid, don’t you know. Heaven forbid a woman stay single forever if she wants. It’s even more absurd that she’s working on a doctorate and focusing on her studies and career instead of pleasing men! Can you imagine! 

Ugh. Down in the cargo hold, Armando, the ship’s mechanic, takes forever to sit down to eat his dinner. Just as he finally gets to it, the phone rings. When he leaves, Herbie scoots up so Paco can steal the food. When Armando gets back, his chicken is all gone! All that’s left is the bones flying out of Herbie’s hood. For some reason, he never considers that someone might be hiding in the car and jumps right to “omg the car is alive”. I mean, it is, but the car didn’t eat his chicken and the gag goes on waaaaay too long. Armando does try to pry open Herbie’s trunk but Herbie just zooms around the cargo hold terrorizing the crew. Just ’cause.

Armando escapes the deranged little car long enough to call Captain Blythe. Blythe naturally thinks he’s drunk and launches into one of his crazy pirate rants, vowing to whip whoever’s responsible for this. He storms down into the hold and sees that Armando wasn’t lying, the car really is rampaging around by itself. Several more minutes of shenanigans later, the crew catches Herbie in a net. Armando finally gets the trunk open and finds Paco inside. Wow, the simplest solution was the correct one! We just wasted a solid fifteen minutes!

Blythe calls Pete and DJ up to his office to demand payment for everything Herbie broke, brandishing a cat-o-nine tails the entire time. Pete protests because he wasn’t involved in any of this, but he is the legal owner of the car so he’s liable for the damages. Unfortunately, they don’t have the money. They could maybe pay him off after they win the race in Brazil, but how can they do that without Herbie? DJ has a brilliant idea. Aunt Louise is so desperate for her niece to drop everything for a man that she’s sure to sponsor them if Pete hooks up with Melissa. Pete thinks the whole plan is a little skeezy but DJ talks him into it. Eugh.

That night, the cruise ship holds a big costume party. DJ, wearing his mechanic’s suit, tries to tell Aunt Louise, dressed as Little Bo Peep, all about the joys of racing, but she’s not listening. She’s too busy swooning over Captain Blythe (a pirate, natch) as he grumbles about the good old days when he could assault women without consequence. Lovely. Just then, Pete, in his racing jumpsuit, leads Melissa, dressed as an old-timey explorer, out onto the dance floor. It’s working! Pete tells her all about how she’s Not Like Other Girls because she’s smart and beautiful. She thinks he’s making fun of her but he promises she’s not. To prove it, he takes her glasses off her face and wow! She’s beautiful! What a novel development that is not at all a stupid cliché. Now that the girl has fulfilled her destiny of being attractive to a man, Melissa follows Pete to her stateroom and they kiss. Gag.

Now Pete’s starting to actually feel bad about lying to Melissa. Could it be that he’s actually starting to like her? What a novel development that is not at all a stupid cliché. DJ doesn’t care at all about Melissa. Not only do they have the money in hand, Aunt Louise has actually agreed to sponsor them all the way to Brazil! All they have to do is get Herbie out and they’re home free. Pete just has to keep pretending to like the ugly girl for a little bit longer.

Meanwhile, Paco’s being held in the cargo hold. The boy’s locked in a cage on a dirty mattress until he can be deported. I didn’t say it. Your mind went there. Don’t blame me. Herbie rolls off his blocks to say hello, and Paco cheerfully tells him they’re going to bring him back to the orphanage, but it’s fine, they can’t make him stay there. Herbie responds by honking, which is the first time we’ve ever heard him communicate through sound which is weird but at least he’s not talking or anything. Paco decides they’re friends now and names the car Ocho. So now he’s Ocho for the rest of the movie, though I’m going to call him Herbie for ease of use. Would it be that hard for Pete to know Herbie’s name from his uncle, and for Paco to overhear before he steals their wallets? What is the point of not using Herbie’s real name?

As their conversation ends, Armando catches Herbie driving himself back to his spot. In one of the more unbelievable stunts in the franchise, Herbie bends his antenna to reach the keys to Paco’s cage. Paco thanks Herbie for freeing him, unaware that Armando’s run off to report to the Captain. Seconds later, the whole crew storms into the cargo hold. Herbie flings his door open and Paco jumps inside, and it’s time for a wacky chase scene! After some slapstick, Herbie takes the elevator up to the main deck. Blythe is gushing about the joys of kidnapping women while Aunt Louise fawns over him. It’s really one of the more disturbing running gags I’ve ever seen. Herbie smashes into the room to knock over a bunch of stuff while everyone present mugs at the camera with their best “look surprised!” face. The punchline is Captain Blythe taking an honest-to-god pie in the face.

Enough is enough. Captain Blythe is ready to get rid of that car once and for all. Aunt Louise tearfully begs him to reconsider, even pulling her shirt down a little bit to be more, uh, persuasive, because she has not figured out that he hates women yet. After some blustering, Captain Blythe declares that Herbie is a menace to society and he’s making him walk the plank for his crimes. Poor Herbie drops like a stone into the water while Herbie cries. Now, the Herbie movies are at their best when they’re really leaning into the absurdity of their premise. Herbie surfing. Herbie falling in love. This is the only scene in the movie where we see even a glimmer of that. It’s actually quite affecting seeing the beloved little car falling to his watery grave, harkening back to the Golden Gate Bridge scene in the first movie. The sad little “meeeeeep” his horn makes as he drops sells it. Oh, and the prop Herbie they dropped in the ocean was never recovered. It’s still down there, just off the coast of California. Which is just depressing.

As one final punishment for this mess, Blythe maroons Pete, DJ, Aunt Louise, and Melissa in Panama. He wanted to keelhaul them (what is wrong with this man?) but the first mate convinced him to let them live. How generous. Pete apologizes to Aunt Louise for the way things turned out and starts to come clean about Melissa. Turns out, she knew he was playing her the entire time! But being with a man who uses you for his own ends and doesn’t respect you is faaaar better than not being with a man at all, so Aunt Louise let it happen. Lovely. And now that she’s gotten validation from Pete, Melissa has acknowledge that her only value is her appearance, removed her glasses, and let her hair down. She’s not pleased to hear them talking about her and brushes past Pete, shoving her glasses back onto her nose. I think this is supposed to mean she’s retreating back to her unattractive ideas like having a career and being independent. We’re definitely supposed to feel bad for Pete and DJ for being stranded in Panama with no money and no girlfriend.

True to their word, Prindle and his guys met up with the ship in Panama. They spot Paco and claim to be from local Child Services, but he’s not buying it. He elbows Prindle in the gut and runs for his life. He runs all the way to the jungle, where he collapses onto a dock near some derelicts. Suddenly, he spots something floating in the water. It’s Herbie! He’s worse for wear after being submerged in saltwater, but he’s hanging in there, honking feebly for help. Paco dives into the water to save him but what’s a kid going to do? The drifters leap into action to help haul the car, but they don’t want to help, they want to sell the rusted out Volkswagen for scrap metal!

Paco builds a little grave out of rocks and sticks for his fallen friend. If he wasn’t so annoying it might actually be really sad, but it’s over quickly. Herbie rattles back to life within a few seconds, coughing and sputtering but not out of the game yet. The drifters return with their tools, but Herbie can’t get his engine started. That is, until they lay hands on Paco to try to pull him out of the car. Seeing his friend in danger gives him the strength to floor it, and off they go! They zoom along the beaches and cliffs while an absolutely insipid song about friendship plays and all the little children follow Herbie like the Pied Piper.

Paco finishes clumsily painting the word Taxi on Herbie’s side along with some smiley faces so he can earn an honest living from now on. Surely no one will suspect anything. Before he gets very far, Prindle’s guys find him and interrogate him about the missing film. Paco was focused on the cash when he stole those wallets and has literally no idea what they’re talking about, but if he doesn’t find it, Prindle will take Herbie apart. The film’s probably in the trash in a completely different country, but there’s a small chance it got switched with the other wallets he stole that day. And, well, he doesn’t have any better ideas.

Since they lost their prize racecar, Pete and DJ have to work as waiters to try to earn money to get back to the United States. Pete blames it all on that no good kid they met. By crazy random happenstance, that very kid turns up at that exact moment to apologize for everything. He makes a big show of crying about how sorry he is, and it actually convinces Pete because Pete is an idiot. Paco is soooo grateful that he gives Pete a great big hug before leaving. And when he’s gone, Pete’s pockets feel awfully light. Yeah, he got pickpocketed again. You’d think they’d have learned from the last time or at least know better than to let the hug happen but this isn’t the kind of movie where actions have consequences. Pete and DJ run outside and see Paco jump into the very car they thought was lost forever!

By crazy random happenstance, both Aunt Louise and Captain Blythe call for a taxi and hop in this totally real and very convincing dirty white Beetle covered in paint. Despite this not being how Beetles work, they shove into opposite doors and are shocked to see each other again. They argue about where they’re going but it doesn’t really matter. They’ll go where Herbie tells them, thanks, and Herbie’s getting away from Prindle. Captain Blythe is incensed at the “cabbie’s” erratic driving and yanks his hat off his head. Surprise! It’s Paco! And only now does Aunt Louise figure out that the white Beetle they’re sitting in is the white Beetle that’s been tormenting him. Good job, Sherlock. Herbie won’t let them out or slow down no matter how much they scream. This is like the fourth time this movie they’ve done this gag not counting the times they did it in the other three. It’s totally not getting old you guys.

Herbie’s wild ride takes him past Melissa who’s studying monuments or something, back in her glasses and tight bun. By crazy random happenstance, Pete and DJ find her in the middle of this random road, running as fast as they can after this speeding car. She doesn’t know what’s going on but she decides to help anyway which if I were feeling charitable towards this movie I might think represents her being a good person but I’m not feeling charitable. She flags down a bus driver and shoves a wad of cash in his hand to buy the whole bus. Laughing at his good fortune, the driver kicks off all his passengers and Team Good Guys has a vehicle to give chase. Unfortunately, it’s not as fast or reliable as she hoped. The thing’s barely running, which is weird because it was fine when the bus driver had it.

Somehow we’re back in Mexico, which is absolutely nowhere near Panama so I don’t know how that happened and the movie doesn’t care to explain. Prindle is still after them, so Herbie ducks into the nearest building with the bad guys in hot pursuit. To Aunt Louise’s great excitement, it just so happens to be a bull ring. The matador shouts in Spanish for the cars to get out of the ring, and the audience pelts the interruptions with garbage. But there is nothing Herbie loves more than chaos and we get an interminable scene of the bull charging a Volkswagen and the Volkswagen fighting back. At least they don’t kill the bull when they win. The spectacle wins over the crowd, and they all cheer as the humans step out to take a bow. And you guys, I am ashamed of myself. Somewhere in this crowd is the last-ever onscreen appearance of the queen of the sassy old ladies. I MISSED AN IRIS ADRIAN APPEARANCE. I MISSED THE LAST IRIS ADRIAN APPEARANCE. I AM A SHAM.

The bus moves so slowly that Pete, DJ, and Melissa despair of ever finding the missing wallet or Aunt Louise. Wait, there she is on the side of the road with Captain Blythe! What a crazy random happenstance! She fills them in on everything that’s happened and urges them to help find Paco before the bad men do. Somehow we like him now. I don’t know man. While they putter along, Prindle and his guys take to the air in a rented plane. Our heroes find a town where Pete does his best to fix the bus while attempting to apologize to Melissa. She’s not having it and good for her. Blythe bellows at a harbormaster into the phone, screaming his head off that he just can’t believe no one in Mexico understands plain English because entitled Americans. Finally, they get the bus back on the road but it’s not fixed. In fact, it explodes right in their faces. Anything to keep our lead characters out of the movie.

Meanwhile, Paco and Herbie think they’ve lost Prindle in the woods, but the plane is right above them. Prindle’s just holding out because he’s the only Herbie villain who knows better than to underestimate this wacky car. Besides, he has a plan. A messenger calls the “taxi” to come pick up a passenger from the local tavern. Thrilled to have a job and put this filmstrip business behind him, Paco zooms off. But surprise! When he gets to the tavern, Prindle is waiting to ambush him! The bartender just lets this man kidnap a struggling child like it ain’t no thing. You even see him shrug and go back to cleaning the bar. Wow, guys. Prindle hauls Paco out to the plane kicking and screaming. By the time Herbie hears him, it’s too late. He’s gone. So Herbie does the only thing he can and races off to find everyone else at the exact moment they’re lamenting not having a ride. Aunt Louise just knows he’s in trouble through the magic of ~woman’s intuition~. Five people smash into the back of a Volkswagen bug to get him back.

We never see them get it back but somehow the crooks got their filmstrip back. With it in hand, they easily find their buried ancient Incan ruins. Rain pours around them as they dig up an ancient Mayan calendar. Or a manhole cover spray-painted gold. One of the two. Now that they have what they came for, they don’t need Paco anymore so they just dump him in the wilderness. He sits there in the jungle, lost and alone and shivering from the cold, until a snarling cougar stock sound gets closer and closer. Paco runs for it before something with big teeth and nasty claws eats him up. But it’s only Herbie, bursting through the foliage to the rescue! Paco fills in the rest of the cast on how the bad guys stole some ancient treasure. Melissa realizes they’re sitting right on top of priceless Inca ruins. They have to stop them! So Herbie floors it after the bad guys and pops his hood at the perfect moment to scoop up the manhole cover and get gone.

We’re 80 minutes in and you know what we haven’t seen? The title of the movie. So the gang follows a banana truck down the highway. To hide from the bad guys, they disguise themselves as a Volkswagen Beetle covered in bananas from roof to wheel. Who would ever suspect anything? It’s completely inconspicuous. So they drive like that until they know they’re safe, then turn to a museum to deliver the gold. Along the way, Blythe reaches his limit and literally dives out of Herbie into a random truck in his desperation to get out of this travesty. Mood. When the rest of Team Good Guys brings the manhole cover to the museum, Prindle jumps out of what I swear is a broom closet to deliver some cliche villain dialogue. He easily ties up the protagonists and gets the gold all the way out of the museum without any opposition whatsoever until he passes by Paco, who’s selling off the bananas. Herbie, with the last few bananas still clinging to him, zooms off to give chase.

Tragically, Car Chase O’Clock comes to an abrupt end when Herbie encounters every villain’s arch-nemesis: a small thin chain. Thwarted and unable to break it, Herbie does the logical things and pelts Team Bad Guys with bananas. For. E. Ver. We get a solid five minutes of the villains literally slipping on banana peels for a whole bunch of dumb pratfalls before finally, finally loading the gold onto the plane. Herbie chases them down, but the plane can’t take off with the heavy gold weighing it down. Herbie easily catches up with them and raises his hood to chomp the plane’s tail in between ramming them so hard pieces of the plane fall off. I usually give Herbie movies a pass for the car chase thing because they’re about racing but this is brutal. After forever, the plane crashes into another small thin chain and is obviously incapacitated. The gold rolls out of the broken plane right in front of a policeman and the day is saved!

All’s well that ends well and everyone’s back aboard the Sun Princess. Somehow. Aunt Louise makes one last ditch effort to get Captain Blythe’s attention with a sexy dance. For a moment, it looks like it worked. He’s definitely using some very sexually charged language in her general direction, at least. But no, he’s looking out the window at a Spanish galleon, because his only true love is boats. So Aunt Louise gives up at last. But at least she has the Grand Primeo to look forward to! Pete and DJ have Herbie all cleaned up in their stateroom (don’t ask how he got there because the movie doesn’t care and neither do I). Melissa, with her glasses off and her hair completely down, is back on good terms with Pete but not explicitly dating him which I appreciated. But Pete’s not going to be Herbie’s driver. Paco is! He has a little jumpsuit and everything! I mean, good luck with that, I don’t think they let small children drive Formula One racecars but I don’t know enough about racing to prove it. Our big stinger is the explanation of why Paco keeps calling Herbie Ocho (5+3 = 8, duh), and everyone toasting to victory in Rio. BUT WE NEVER SEE THE FREAKING RACE. IN A HERBIE MOVIE.

No kidding this is the worst of the Herbie franchise. It’s barely even a movie. It’s a loosely connected series of tired cliches and forced gags with absolutely no connective tissue. Why is any of this happening? Shenanigans. That’s it, that’s all you get. The gold thefts are such a cheap, lazy excuse for a plot, especially because our quote-unquote leads aren’t connected to them at all. The only human character who is is Paco, and he’s too irritating to carry the movie. And the biggest flaw is that this is a Herbie movie at all. You come to Herbie for the stunt driving, and that barely exists here at all outside the bullfighting sequence. Add to all that a heavy stench of white people writing Mexican caricatures and appalling sexism (especially from Blythe eugh) and it is not a good time.

CHARACTERS

Pete Stancheck is set up as our main character and then he’s not. At all. We don’t even see him through large chunks of the movie, even though he’s supposed to be Herbie’s owner and the stand-in for Jim Douglas. The only real function he ends up having is to make Jim look bad without even showing up! Not that Jim needed help, but I digress. It would have been so easy for Pete to have some kind of knowledge of Herbie without really believing it, and to make an arc out of learning to work with Herbie. But instead he spends most of the movie literally tied up. Stephan W. Burns only other notable work is a film called The Thorn Birds. There’s a tragic reason for that: he passed away at the age of 35 from complications from AIDS after a contaminated blood transfusion.

Davy “DJ” Johns serves even less of a purpose than Pete. He’s only there so Pete has someone to talk to and to peer pressure him into manipulating Melissa, and that turns out to be completely pointless because they get the money for the race before it even happens! In a movie with too much going on with nothing to tie it together, extraneous characters like this are an egregious flaw. I just… don’t care. At all. We last saw Charles Martin Smith as Longnecker in the equally boring, pointless, and annoying No Deposit, No Return, and even though he’s better known as a director, he will be back.

Paco manages to combine the Precocious Child archetype perfected by Kevin Corcoran with every possible Mexican stereotype you can think of to create this absolutely toxic sludge of a character. It’s not the actor’s fault. Joaquin Garay III does fine with the material he’s given. It’s just that the material given perpetuates the idea that Mexican people are untrustworthy thieves then turns around and wants us to think this kid is the most adorable thing ever. It doesn’t work. Still, he’s part of a fairly impressive Disney dynasty. His daughter has a major supporting role on the Disney+ show Diary of a Future President, and his father voiced Panchito in The Three Caballeros! So that’s neat.

Captain Blythe‘s brand of humor is even more disturbing. His violent misogyny is played for laughs, and innocent women are portrayed as exaggerating their fear when they flinch. Bellowing that he wants nothing more than to go back to a time when they were property to be used and abused at will, or threatening his female guests at knife point cannot have gone over well in 1980 and it certainly didn’t go over well for me. It should be a bad sign when a character literally jumps out of the movie but for me it was a relief. And it’s a shame because Harvey Korman is a talented comedian, he just didn’t get to let it show here at all. I guess being in the Star Wars Holiday Special does things to a man.

“Aunt” Louise Trends is probably the least bad character in this movie. She’s still not great, but at least there’s potential with her crush on the Captain. I just wish she had a liiiitle more respect for her niece’s wishes. Or I guess for the Captain’s, as I maintain that no means no for guys too, he’s just so noxious I didn’t sympathize with him like I usually do. Cloris Leachman is utterly wasted here- her thirsty old rich lady schtick landed much better in North Avenue Irregulars.

Melissa is the only sane person in this movie and she’s portrayed as being completely ridiculous. How dare she want to focus on her studies! She’s a woman, she needs to be married off, obviously! Her value is not in her brains or the hard work she puts into her doctorate, it’s in being pretty, and what she really needs is for our male lead to validate her. It’s such a toxic trope. Poor Elyssa Devalos. This plotline was better than her story in Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, but only because that is literally the worst love story I’ve seen from Disney thus far. And at least Pete and Melissa don’t actually end up as a couple as far as I can see.

MUSIC

Frank de Vol is back from Monte Carlo to infuse this train wreck with an extra dose of Mexican stereotyping. I kind of liked his work on the last movie for its use of leitmotifs and its strong love theme, but this one relies heavily on snippets of the Mexican Hat Dance and La Cucaracha in case you forgot where it was supposed to be set. Like the last movie, the Herbie theme does put in an appearance, which was nice to see at least. And the jazzy theme that played while the bad guys were slipping on banana peels was literally the only good part of that scene. But for the most part, it’s a pretty weak score. But as much of a miss as the score is, it gets worse….

I Found a New Friend is not just the worst song I’ve heard from Disney, it’s one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard in my life. You think that’s hyperbole? Click that link. Unless you value your eardrums. I warned you. We’ve heard some saccharine childrens’ choirs bleat some insipid cliches in our time, and this entire movie is insipid cliches, but that description does not do this abomination justice. Frank de Vol is only a mediocre composer but as a lyricist? He rhymes tomorrow with the name of Spanish-born actress, singer, and comedienne Charo! He forces mañana with banana just to work in the title of the movie even though those two words don’t rhyme! He manages to SPELL FRIEND WRONG. THE REPRISE GOES F-R-E-N-D FRIEND. HOW DO YOU MANAGE THAT.

ARTISTRY

Like Monte Carlo, this movie’s tiny little bright spot is Frank V Phillips’ cinematography. The on-location shooting in Mexico and Panama is lovely, really emphasizing the turquoise ocean and the bright colors of the people, both the main cast and the extras. They also pull off some interesting camera angles, which should be the bare minimum but it’s always surprising to see in a live action comedy. The best came when Paco’s lost in the jungle being stalked by an animal. The POV shot of the unseen jaguar or whatever came straight out of Watcher in the Woods. I think that’s just a phase we’re going through and I’m not mad about it.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Talk about diminishing returns! Herbie Goes Bananas took all the flaws of Monte Carlo and exaggerated them to the point where that’s all there was. There’s very little to like here, just tired cliches limping along with only the thinnest of plots to hold them together. Everything is predictable, nothing is funny, and the icing on the cake is that godawful song. None of the Herbie sequels really measured up to the first one but this movie should not have been made.

Favorite scene: Despite the pollution, Herbie walking the plank. It’s the only part of the movie that felt like it was from the same series as the original.

Final rating: 3/10. This movie and I are not frends.