The Love Bug 1969 Film Review

When we think of famous cars we tend to usually think of cars that were the stars of TV shows like for example KITT from Knight Rider. However we very rarely think of cars that were stars of a movie and that is a damn shame as the film that i'm going to be talking to you all about today launched a make of a car into superstardom with all but one of the films and the show in this franchise all baring the name of the car in it's title and so then join me as I review the film that might as well be a live action version of Wacky Races with the film in question being called simply just "The Love Bug" enjoy.

The plot of this film is when a down on his luck race car driver is forced into buying a Volkswagen Beetle he finds that the car has a mind of it's own with the owner of the dealership that the car was brought from also wanting the car it's up to our heroes to win the big race and save the car from being destroyed for good. Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual plot that's actually featured / presented to us in this very film well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual plot that's actually featured / presented to us in this very film was in all honesty not that bad. Whilst yes granted this films plot isn't the strongest plot out there it really didn't need to be that strong of a plot as part of what makes this films plot work as well as it does is its charm and the film is very charming and it does have a plot that does charm the pants right off of you and yes granted the film would have been helped quite alot if the film did have a more stronger plot to it but in doing so that would rob the film of alot of the charm that makes it work so well in the first place. To be fair this films plot was never going to be that good in the first place as its a film about a car that can move and think on its own and those kinds of plots don't really require deep and thought provoking plots to make them work as all they need is simple and basic plots and that's it and that's exactly what the plot of this film is in all of the best ways possible and the film is all the more better off due to how simple and basic it is in the first place with the plot of this film also being really rather entertaining and as well as being really rather engaging as well in my freaking opinions anyways / at least.

Starring in this film is Dean Jones as James "Jim" Douglas , Michele Lee as Carole Bennett and Buddy Hackett as Tennessee Steinmetz. Also starring in this film is Joe Flynn as Havershaw , Benson Fong as Tang Wu , Joe E. Ross as A Detective , Barry Kelley as A Police Sergeant , Iris Adrian as A Carhop , Gary Owens as An Announcer , Chick Hearn as An Announcer , Andy Granatelli as The Association President , Ned Glass as The Toll Booth Attendant , Robert Foulk as Bice , Gil Lamb as The Policeman At Park , Nicole Jaffe as Girl In Dune-Buggy , Wally Boag as The Flabbergasted Driver , Russ Caldwell as Boy Driving Dune-Buggy , Peter Renaday as The Policeman On Bridge , Brian Fong as Chinese Carrying Herbie , Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez as The Mexican Driver , Dale Van Sickel as A Driver , Fred Stromsoe as A Driver , David Tomlinson as Peter Thorndyke and Herbie as Himself.

Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual acting that's actually featured / presented to us in this very film well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual acting that's actually featured / presented to us in this very film was in all honesty not that bad. To be frank the acting in this film didn't really need to be as good as it ended up being due to the fact that this is a film that doesn't really require good acting in it as alot of us are just here to see this cute little car do these cute little things and that's it yet it does speak wonders to this films actors that they all managed to turn in some really good performance and while some are better then others that is something that was always going to be the case in the first place. With the best actor in this film being David Tomlinson as Peter Thorndyke as while it would have been super easy to say that Dean Jones is the films best actor David goes so over the top with his performance that you can't help but fall in love with it with that kind of performance being something that does help to elevate the film as it does show us the audience that he knows full well just what kind of a film that he's in and is just willing to have fun with it and that is something that really does shone through in his final performance in this film. With the acting that's in this film not really being helped buy the fact that this films script is just so bad as it gives none of this films actors alot to work with interms of what it is that there actual characters personalities are even meant to be in the first place which is something that really does help to hurt the overall quality of the acting that's in this very film.

One of the best things about these more older films is working out just how they managed to pull off certain things in the film and the same thing is true for this film. With there being alot of shots in this film that do make you wonder just how they managed to pull them off the chief amongst which being the fact that we can't see anyone driving Herbie whilst this is an easy effect to achieve when in the studio as you could just have two wires either side of the steering wheel pulling whatever way is needed in the scene but alot of the time that we see Herbie without a driver and he's driving its's on location and that is something that does make you wonder how they pulled off as they could have the mirrors be one way mirrors as that would hide the driver or there could have been another way. Another great example of this films effects are the scenes where Herbie leaps his front end up in excitement as there is no way that you could do that kind of effect practically that I could think but evidentially the makers of this film did find away to do it without doing harm to the car or the actors inside the car and it's scenes that like that that I do actually like as t does require you to think on how they might have done it back in the late sixties as today you could very well just say that it was in CGI and you'd pretty much be right on the mark but back in those days when you didn't have CGI to fix the issue for you you had to actually come up with the solution and work it all out yourself and this film is perhaps the best example of that due to all of the crazy and out there things that they have the car doing that would be quite hard to do either practically or a computer as either method would require you to work out alot of things before you put them into practice. 

Of course the main star of this film is the Volkswagen Beetle with the car being called Herbie which is a really cute name for the car and to be fair the name does fit the car really well. It is very easy to see why Herbie became a minor star after this film as he does have so much personality as you know from how the film looks at him if he's feeling angry , playful or upset with all of those things feeding into the various aspects of Herbie's personality as there are times where we do get to see him being playful with Jim and Carole and there are times where we do get to see him being both angry and upset both of which happen during the films second act where he does become angry and upset at Jim for wanting to replace him and trying to sell him back to Peter Thorndyke. All of these things do serve to make Herbie a character that can be both child like and full of child like wonder and whimsy but also feel adult and dark with again the end of the films second act and to a much more lesser extent the films third act being good examples of this as without him even saying a word of dialog we know what Herbie is feeling at any given time with his character being the more fleshed out because of it where as with characters like Jim , Carole , Peter Thorndyke and Tennessee Steinmetz not really feeling all that fleshed out as characters with them kind of taking a backseat to Herbie and this is something that does make sense as it's the car that people are coming to this film to see and while yes the human characters do start to feel more fleshed out the longer that the film does go on its always Herbie that people come on back to this film to see as he does have so much character and personality to him in the first place that it is quite easy to see why he's become a Disney icon in his own right as he is just that well done of character.

The film does get very dark near the end of its second act as after Herbie finds out what Jim is planning to do he straight up trashes Jims new car before then essentially running away. However things get more darker from there as after Herbie escapes some of Thorndyke's henchmen that were planning to destroy him he does to a pair and then tries to commit suicide by driving himself into the water below only to be stopped by Jim that is such a dark thing to have in a kids film and yet here it is plain as day in this film and it is something that does work as Herbie does feel like he's been pushed to that point as Jim doesn't want him and Thorndyke wants to kill him so to Herbie the only way out would be to kill yourself this is despite the fact that both Carole and Tennessee Steinmetz had just previously shown more kindness to Herbie then what Jim did by trying to fix him. It could even be argued that the middle of the films third act is also pretty dark as we see a more beaten up Herbie and Jim come close to giving up on the race with it only being when Thorndyke punches Jim that Herbie gets his second wind and agrees to start up again both of these scenes do make what could be seen as being nothing more then a fluffy childrens film now suddenly have a bit more of an edge to it as you could be watching a cute and harmless scene one second and then the very next you could be getting a scene that is more mature with both of those scenes being scenes that wouldn't be in the film if the film was made today as modern day Disney is afraid to show there audiences more challenging and mature things yet both of those scenes are key plot points in the film and both of them work as the film had given us time to become fully invested in the characters and in the plot with the makers of this film tsking the time to make us care for both Jim and Herbie.

Whilst Jim is the human main character of the film the best human character in the film has to be Peter Thorndyke. As he is just such an over the top villain that you can't help but be entertained by him whenever he's on screen as you just know that even tho he's going to be doing something evil and possibly even harm Herbie how he goes about it does make him a really fun villain like for example when he goes to Tennessee's and Jim's house one night instead of just trying to sneak around to Herbie and do what he was planning to do he instead gets Tennessee drunk on his own Irish coffee and then proceed to essentially do the exact same thing to Herbie something which he didn't need to go that far to do as he could have just sneaked around to Herbie and do it anyway. Heck even tho he doesn't really have a plan which is something that would bring alot of villains down is something that does oddly work for this character as the only thing that he wants to do is to destroy Herbie quite literally with the film basically following his attempts to do exactly that and yet seeing how he tries and fails to destroy the car is something that never gets old as David Tomlinson just sells it so well with his over the top facial expressions and his British pompousness. However tho the character and the film for that matter would have been made all the more better if the character did have more of an end goal in and as that could have given us some insight as to who his character is like maybe he wants to destroy Herbie as he sees him as a threat to the fact that he's barely lost a race which is motive enough but for one reason or another the film really doesn't give the character any kind of motive and therefore we don't really know why he's evil as it can't because of the fact that Herbie is winning races as he was already mean to him at the start of the film where as if the film did give him a motive then we could get to see him become this truly evil person as the film progresses.

Now then this film has / had an exact grand total running time of exactly one hour and forty seven minuets and forty seconds. Which yeah i'm not going to lie here for a Herbie film is a tad bit on the ling side as realistically you want a Herbie film to be more closer to one hour and thirty minuets and not even close to being two hours as realistically your not going to get a kid to sit down for that amount of time and it's kids that are this films target audience in the first place however tho to give this film some credit it does need a slightly long running time in order to tell alot of its plot as while you very easily could tell this films plot in one hour and thirty minuets you would have to loose alot of the more adult stuff that is key to making alot of this film work in the first place. With the film having the right amount of plot there to cover that amount of running time in the first place with the film even using its running time really wisely as the film does take the time to add things to its plot that do make it more developed which is something that the makers of this film really didn't have to do with them even taking the time to show the friendship and then later romance between Jim and Carole develop at a more natural pace and then showing the friendship between Jim and Herbie develop at the same time. The same thing is also true for the films character development as while it's really only Jim that gets any kind of character development in this film this is something that does make sense as both Tennessee and Carole are basically there to act a moral compass to Jim to try and get him to do the right thing and the second that he does something that does actively hurt Herbie they are the first ones to call him on it and it's because of that that Jim does start to believe what Tennessee has been saying to him about Herbie and finally believe that Herbie is alive and has feelings something which he never could have dine at the start of the film but at the same time tho it would have been nice if the film did give more of the characters some form of character development with it being made clear as day that the makers of this film were more focused on making this film feel like a live action Wacky Races film then they were anything else but I really will admit that this film really does have some really good pacing to it tho.

So now then as this is a comedy that really does mean that I have to actually talk about the actual comedy that's actually featured / presented to us in this very film well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual comedy that's actually featured / presented to us in this very film was in all honesty really good. With alot of what makes the comedy in this film work so well being the fact that alot of it is very child like with alot of this films jokes being the kinds of jokes that you would expect a child to tell but because of the fact that they are written so well you do end up laughing at them. With the best joke in the whole entire film not really being any one particular joke but rather it's the entire third act of the film as all of the third act of the film is just this one race and during it we do get to see alot of really funny things happen be in Thorndykes car being invaded by a bear which does proceed to scare him or the fact that we get to see a bunch of Asian people pick up and carry Herbie , Jim , Carole and Tennessee on nothing put two poles bottom line being there are alot of really good jokes to be found in this third act of the film with another good one being when the racers are diverted into a cave by Thorndyke which then kind of turns into an actual Wacky Races race as we see dozens of cars driving in the mine like they did in the opening episode of Wacky Races with this being something that does tell you that the makers of this film knew to keep alot of the really good and funny jokes for the race as that's when us the audience are going to be mist invested in the film with the rest of the films jokes being just as good as well in my freaking opinions anyways / at least.

Overall if you want to see a live action Wacky Races film then watch this film as it's as close to one as we ever going to get with the film knowing full well that it's a fun and goofy film and whilst it does have it's more darker and mature moments in it those don't really stop the film from being fun rather they help it be more fun in my freaking opinions anyways / at least. Now then i've talked about all of the good and as well as all of the bad things that re in this very film in this very review and as such that really does mean that this very film really does earn itself a grand old score of exactly a 6.5 out of 10 from me.

Now then as for where I personally got all of the i ages that I personally used in this very review well then boys and girls and as well as ladies and gentlemen I personally got all of the images that I personally used in this very review from Amazon . Co . Uk , IMP Awards . Com and Google Images. With my personally preferred website to use to get images really from this very film being the really great Google Images this is really because of the fact that really all of the images that I really indeed got and really used from Google Images are all really high quality really with all of the images that really are all and of course really currently up and on the really great and the really solid Google Images really are all being really fairly high in quality and as well as them all really being fairly high in definition.