Can We Talk about The Love Bug (1997)

Welcome back.   I had gone back and forth over whether or not, I wanted to review this film or not but I decided to instead make this a Can We Talk about.  A lot film series have at least one film that is met with lukewarm reception and can end up being a movie people would rather forget.   For me this is one of those movies.   I am of course talking about The Love Bug, oh no not the original that's a classic but rather the '97 TV movie sequel.   Okay if this is a sequel why did use the same same as the first film in the franchise?


What is it I dislike about this film?  Well, it's not a bad Herbie movie and Bruce Campbell is a good choice to replace Dean Jones as Herbie's driver.

It  does something however that kind of feels unwanted.   It gives Herbie a back story and explains how he was created.   According to this film, he was created by Dr. Gustav Stumpfell from Germany when brought to America to work on their cars and a picture of his late wife fell into the mix that he was working on for the metal.   Gustav believed that the amount of love he had for his wife made it's way into Herbie and that is what brought him to life.   He sent Herbie into hiding in fear that someone would try to use Herbie for evil and that is how Herbie ended up in San Francisco.   Stumpfell is later tricked by  the film's villain Simon Moore III to use the formula to create a new Herbie and he does but Simon puts a picture in of someone he loathes and thus Horace The Hate Bug is created.

Now if you couldn't tell, Horace is an evil Herbie and I must ask why? This just seems so dumb and yes, Horace is perhaps the biggest threat that Herbie faces but all of the other villains in this series were more or less comedic and something about an evil Herbie just seems convoluted and so out of place for this series.  Okay, comedic  isn't the right word but  this just seems like they were trying to make Herbie,  the word's on the tip of my tongue.  What is it oh that's right?


Extreme



Now Horace dos work for this film but I'm sorry I just can't buy the idea of an evil Herbie.  It just doesn't work for me but that is only a minor problem compared to my other complaint.  Why did the film need to  give Herbie a back story?   For me, part of the charm of Herbie is not knowing how he came to life. That let the audience use their minds to come up with how Herbie was brought to life and it just was.     Matter of fact I recall Les mentioning how he thought Herbie how he thought Herbie was just magic and I've also heard others say that perhaps was a project of  The Absent Minded Professor that went astray.  Both of those are fun fan theories and maybe it's just me but when giving us the answer, it seems to make these null and void. Also I have to ask why did they wait until '97,   29 years after the first film to give Herbie a back story. If this wasn't important enough to touch upon in the original 4, why did this film the need to bring it up?


I just don't see the point to this back story.  Though I will say that I do like the Dean Jones cameo in the film as it feels like a passing of the torch. At the end of the day, is this a bad film? No but it's my least favorite Herbie film.     I would not deter anyone from watching it if your curious about it.