Is it time for Herbie the sentient Volkswagen Beetle to go bananas once again?

Many of the most enjoyable films ever made require a little suspension of disbelief. But there’s one franchise that routinely has you disbelieving its suspension. From Disney’s The Love Bug (1969) onwards, Herbie the sentient 1963 Volkswagen Beetle with the big round number 53 has cheekily defied both traffic laws and the laws of physics, rearing up on his back tyres and pulling off an extended wheelie like an overpowered drag racer. A very fun visual, sure, but presumably not great for the exhaust.

If you haven’t had cause to think of poor Herbie and his rakishly off-centre racing stripe for the past two decades, that’s understandable. It was way back in 2005 that Disney last gave him a proper push with Herbie: Fully Loaded, a wannabe late-summer blockbuster starring Lindsay Lohan that saw the washed up VW get refitted for the testosterone-fuelled world of Nascar racing.

The result was a bright, peppy adventure that showcased the essential Herbie wheelie. But it was apparently not enough to keep the IP rolling, and it’s all been terribly quiet since. 

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You can make the case that the initial run of The Love Bug, Herbie Rides Again (1974), Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977) and Herbie Goes Bananas (1980) represents Disney’s most successful live-action franchise of the 20th century. (There was also a surprisingly fun 1997 TV movie remake of The Love Bug pitting square-jawed goofball Bruce Campbell against a scenery-chewing John Hannah.)

So it seems bizarre that a corporation that is constantly recycling and rebooting its intellectual property would just throw Herbie on the junkheap. As any used car salesman will tell you: it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

Are the stars finally aligning for a comeback? Lindsay Lohan is back in the spotlight thanks to this month’s Freakier Friday, a belated follow-up to the 2003 body-swap comedy that itself was a reboot of the 1976 Disney original.

She seems keen to remind fans of her imperial phase around the turn of the millennium – Lohan cameoed in the 2024 Mean Girls remake and, on the Freakier Friday press tour, has rocked yellow outfits evocative of her dual role in The Parent Trap (1998) – so she may be open to reuniting with her Fully Loaded co-star. 

To further convince Disney execs, you could flag up the recent success of F1: The Movie as proof that after underperforming 2023 films like Gran Turismo and Michael Mann’s Ferrari, racing-focused movies can still have mainstream appeal.

Audiences are also responding favourably to the 1960s-inspired retro-future vibe of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which features its own cool Fantasticar… and a robot sidekick called Herbie! A backward-looking but forward-thinking reboot has the potential to tap in to all these cultural indicators.

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Perhaps that’s looking at things through a rose-tinted windscreen. In 2025 self-driving cars are no longer much of a novelty, and fossil fuel-guzzling vehicles are seen as a liability. Maybe a hybrid Herbie would work? Instead of his go-to move of dumping out gloopy motor oil on the baddies he could zap them with a little electric shock instead.

The real problem might be that there has actually been a terrific Herbie movie in recent memory. It’s just that it was a Transformers spinoff called Bumblebee (2018), whose mechanical star turned into a robot as well as a classic clapped-out VW Beetle.

Beyond the implausible vehicular acrobatics and bopping of backsides with car doors, the Herbie movies are at their best when the mischievous motor and his stressed pilot realise they work better together than apart.

That was certainly the emotional heart of Bumblebee, where the mute yellow Autobot helped outcast teen Hailee Steinfeld overcome grief while she helped him hide from the military.

That sort of franchise cross-pollination suggests another potential road forward for Herbie. There is a similarly long-in-the-tooth racing-centred franchise where ludicrous – and indeed Ludacris – car stunts are the norm.

Imagine the excitement when the trailer for the long-delayed continuation of 2023’s Fast X finally drops and scowling Vin Diesel is saved from fiery doom by… a cute little vintage Beetle driven by Lindsay Lohan? It wouldn’t be any more silly than the rest of the Fast saga and it could certainly help Herbie to get back up to speed.

Freakier Friday is in cinemas now. Herbie: Fully Loaded is on Disney+.

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