Main cast: Lindsay Lohan (Maggie Peyton), Michael Keaton (Ray Peyton Sr), Matt Dillon (Trip Murphy), Breckin Meyer (Ray Peyton Jr), Justin Long (Kevin), and Dale Earnhardt Jr (himself)
Director: Angela Robinson

What is Lindsay Lohan doing? She is on her way to being a credible actress with her well-acclaimed role in Mean Girls and being a gloriously coked-up anorexic socialite when she decides to revert to her inner Hilary Duff and star in a movie featuring an intelligent car named Herbie. Is her mother still managing her? Maybe it’s time for Ms Lohan to consider getting a new manager.

This movie is a Disney movie, which is to say, there is the predictable daughter-daddy blues, some earnest G-rated romance between the heroine and some goofball guy, and an intelligent thinking car in the role of the usual singing animals to steal the show. Maggie Peyton is born to a family of sports car racers but his father Ray Sr is retired while Ray Jr is struggling as a racer. Maggie doesn’t want to race because her father has forbidden her to, after she was involved in a car accident when she was a child. When she receives Herbie as her graduation gift, however, she ends up challenging nasty race car driver Trip Murphy (the sound you hear is Matt Dillon flushing what’s left of his career completely down the toilet) and soon she will have to confront the dilemma of winning her father’s approval by being a nice girl or winning his approval by being a race car driver.

Herbie: Fully Loaded is strictly for kids and for adults who love the original Herbie movies. Me, I’m not even aware of those movies since they were released at a time when American movies aren’t widely available in Malaysia, so I’m watching this movie without nostalgia to give the movie some rosy hue. What I get is a predictable, fairly entertaining but ordinary movie best suited for watching on TV rather than paying to watch at the big screen.

Oh, is it just me or there is something really creepy about Herbie eyeing Maggie’s legs and backside when they first meet? Throughout the movie, I get this impression that Herbie is some kind of pedophile car that skeeves me out. You have no idea how many times I want to scream at Maggie, “No, don’t touch that gear stick, eeuw!”