Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Herbie Goes Bananas

When Disney released The Love Bug in late 1968, Herbie became one of the studio’s unlikeliest breakout stars. The movie was a huge hit and most critics actually liked it, which was by no means a given for a Disney gimmick comedy. So it made perfect sense for the studio to hit the gas on additional adventures for the little Volkswagen, even if the adventures themselves made increasingly little sense. Herbie Goes Bananas would be Herbie’s fourth and final big-screen outing for many years. Today, its title is a kind of shorthand for any cinematic franchise that has outstayed its welcome. Just insert any character or title in place of Herbie and you’ll know what I mean. Jason Goes Bananas. Die Hard Goes Bananas. Batman Goes Bananas. Try it! It’s fun!

Vincent McEveety, the man responsible for Herbie’s Monte Carlo adventure, returned to direct a screenplay by Don Tait, author of Unidentified Flying Oddball and other curiosities from Disney’s 1970s era. Ron Miller was still credited as producer but he was increasingly taking a more executive role. This and The Last Flight Of Noah’s Ark would be his last credits as a producer. The nuts-and-bolts on Herbie Goes Bananas would be handled by co-producers Tait and former child star Kevin Corcoran, settling into his new roles behind the scenes.

This will be the last time we see either Tait or Corcoran in this column, although both would do some work for Disney on the TV side. Tait, who had been with the studio since Snowball Express in 1972, doesn’t have many post-Disney credits. He wrote an episode of the short-lived sitcom Mr. Merlin in 1982 and then seemingly retired or switched careers. There’s not a lot of information about him out there.

Corcoran, on the other hand, had a long and fruitful career. Disney had been his on-again, off-again home since his debut as Moochie on Spin & Marty back in 1956. After leaving the studio in the early 1980s, his first gig was as assistant director on the CBS series Scarecrow And Mrs. King. He continued working in that capacity on such shows as Simon & Simon, Murder She Wrote, Baywatch and many others. In 2006, he was honored as a Disney Legend, around the same time he was working as a co-producer on the gritty FX drama The Shield, which I guess is also now owned by Disney thanks to the Circle of Corporate Takeovers. Kevin Corcoran passed away on October 6, 2015, at the age of 66.

Dean Jones had been persuaded to return to the series in 1977 for Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo but opted to sit this one out. Instead, Herbie is bequeathed to Jim Douglas’s previously unmentioned nephew, Pete Stancheck, played by Stephan W. Burns. Burns had a relatively short career, making his debut as L’il Abner in the 1978 NBC variety special L’il Abner in Dogpatch Today. He later appeared in the blockbuster miniseries The Thorn Birds. In 1984, he contracted HIV after receiving a tainted blood transfusion following a motorcycle accident. He died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 35.

Herbie Goes Bananas acknowledges the events of Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo, namechecking Jim Douglas and his victory in the Trans-France Race, although no explanation is offered for how Herbie made his way from Europe to Puerto Vallarta or why Jim would give his beloved car to Pete without so much as a mention of Herbie’s unique abilities. Pete arrives in Mexico with his mechanic buddy, D.J. (Charles Martin Smith, back at Disney for the first time since No Deposit, No Return), and just enough cash to pay Herbie’s garage fee.

Unfortunately for them, the first person they meet is a light-fingered, precocious street urchin named Paco (Joaquin Garay III, whose father, Joaquin Garay, had voiced Panchito in The Three Caballeros all the way back in 1944). Paco provides directions to the garage and lifts D.J.’s wallet containing all their cash. When the theft is discovered, Pete asks to take Herbie for a “test drive” to hunt down the little so-and-so.

But Pete and D.J. aren’t the only tourists to run into Paco that day. A couple of bad guys, Prindle (John Vernon from National Lampoon’s Animal House) and Quinn (Alex Rocco from The Godfather), have come to town to acquire some microfilm showing the location of recently discovered Incan ruins from unscrupulous adventurer Shepard (Richard Jaeckel from Sometimes A Great Notion…if nothing else, Disney really tried to up their villain game on this one). They intend to pillage the ruins for gold but Paco’s theft of Shepard’s wallet forces them to track the kid down first.

D.J. manages to get his money back but Paco still has to give Prindle and his crew the slip. For some reason, Herbie takes an immediate shine to the little thief and becomes an accomplice after the fact, popping his hood as a hiding place. Pete and D.J. drive off without discovering him but Paco helpfully peeks out at the last minute, allowing Prindle and friends to see him so that the story can keep going.

Pete intends to enter the Brazilian Grand Prix and evidently the most efficient way to get to Rio is via a Princess Cruise. Herbie is loaded aboard the Sun Princess, a sister ship to TV’s Love Boat, the Pacific Princess. Commanding the vessel is Captain Blythe (Harvey Korman in his first and, somewhat surprisingly, only Disney movie, although he had appeared in several episodes of the Gallegher serial on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color back in 1965), a lifelong sailor who’d much rather take on a crew of bloodthirsty pirates than be forced to ferry a boatload of spoiled tourists around Mexico and South America.

At dinner that evening, as Blythe regales visitors to the Captain’s Table with violent tales of past exploits, Pete and D.J. share a table with wealthy MILF Louise Trends (Cloris Leachman, her third and final, at least for now, Disney appearance following Charley And The Angel and The North Avenue Irregulars) and her mousy niece, Melissa (Elyssa Davalos from The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again). We know Melissa is mousy because (A), she studies anthropology, (B) she wears glasses and pulls her hair back, and (C) Aunt Louise is desperate to find her a man. D.J. sees this as a great opportunity. While Pete reluctantly romances Melissa, D.J. will persuade Aunt Louise to sponsor Herbie in the big race.

The trouble starts when a crewman (frequent Disney bit player Vito Scotti) has his dinner stolen by Herbie and the concealed Paco. Herbie leads his pursuers on a wild goose chase around the hold but he and Paco are eventually captured and separated. However, the bond between car and boy is stronger than mere shackles or, in this case, wheel chocks. Herbie frees himself and returns to Paco, who has decided to call the car “Ocho” (because Herbie is number 53, five and three are eight, and Paco evidently doesn’t understand how numbers work).

Herbie helps Paco escape, which doesn’t seem like a very great plan since they’re at sea and there’s really nowhere for them to go. Sure enough, their great escape just ends up disrupting a costume party and further infuriating Captain Blythe. Convinced that Herbie is a menace to life and limb, Blythe sentences the car to death. He orders his men to heave Herbie overboard, presumably sending him to a watery grave. He demonstrates amazing restraint by not locking Paco in the trunk before doing so.

Arriving in Panama, Blythe kicks Pete, D.J., Louise, Melissa and Paco off the ship and everyone goes their separate ways. The bad guys turn up and try to grab Paco but he once again manages to give them the slip. Meanwhile, Herbie chugs along underwater, making his way through the Panama Canal and eventually reuniting with Paco. Herbie’s in bad shape but his love for Paco seems to give him the strength to carry on. Paco slaps some paint on the car and decides to start his own taxi service.

But it’ll take more than a sloppy paint job to fool Prindle and his cronies. They see through Herbie’s taxi disguise and corner Paco. When the kid confesses that he doesn’t even have the microfilm anymore after slipping it into D.J.’s wallet by mistake, the gang threatens to dismantle Herbie unless Paco gets it back. It seems like three grown villains should be able to handle this more efficiently themselves but sure, let’s make the little kid get it.

Penniless and carless, Pete and D.J. have taken jobs at a nearby café. Paco tracks them down and lifts the wallet yet again. But the guys are on to the scam this time and they immediately chase after him. Herbie breezes right past the waiting bad guys, who join the pursuit. And because it wouldn’t be a Disney chase without a couple of hapless bystanders, Herbie gets flagged down by both Aunt Louise and Captain Blythe. At least the taxi disguise works on them.

Pete and D.J. join forces with Melissa, who spotted Blythe and her aunt being shanghaied by Herbie. They commandeer a rundown bus, forcing all the passengers, who presumably rely on this bus as their only means of transportation, to get off and wait by the side of the road in the hot sun. And people wonder why American tourists have a negative image abroad. Anyhoo, they go after Herbie as best they can but the chase has basically left them in the dust by now.

Herbie leads the bad guys into a bullfighting arena, throwing them off the trail while simultaneously wowing the crowd as an impromptu toreador. Leaving Aunt Louise and Captain Blythe to bask in the crowd’s adoration, Herbie and Paco disappear before Prindle is able to intercept them. Pete, Melissa and D.J. collect Louise and Blythe while Prindle and the villains search for Herbie and Paco.

Ultimately, Prindle figures out the easiest way to get his hands on Paco is to simply call a cab. When they show up, Prindle grabs Paco and hustles him on board a small plane to go find the Incan ruins. Once there, they help themselves to an enormous gold disc as a sample and abandon Paco in the middle of a monsoon. Naturally, Herbie immediately went off to find Pete and the others to help rescue Paco. They manage to get both the kid and the gold and go off to report Prindle’s crew to the proper authorities.

The “proper authorities” turns out to be a university professor who specializes in Incan artifacts. Realizing that Herbie can be easily identified from Prindle’s airplane, the gang turns Herbie into a banana-mobile. But Prindle anticipated that instead of going to the police, the kids would head immediately to the nearest institute of higher learning. He reclaims the gold and ties everybody up, leaving Paco and Herbie to save the day by pelting them with bananas. With the bad guys defeated, everyone returns to the Sun Princess to resume their trip to Rio with Paco taking over as Herbie’s new driver.

Look, I’m not going to sit here and claim that there’s a right way and a wrong way to make a sequel. There are all sorts of different approaches and it’s hard to predict what ingredients will create a winning formula. But I would suggest that starting from scratch with an entirely new set of largely unappealing characters in a location that appears to have been chosen at random with no connection to previous events might not be the way to go. This would seem to be especially important when the one recurring character in the franchise is, let’s not forget, an inanimate object that relies on a strong director and the human actors surrounding it to project even the slightest hint of personality or emotion.

To give credit where it’s due, it is fairly remarkable that original director Robert Stevenson and McEveety were able to give Herbie a distinct, even lovable personality over the course of the first three films. We know that he’s courageous, mischievous, a little moody and unfailingly loyal to his driver, Jim Douglas. Even in Herbie Rides Again, we can sort of look past Jim’s absence because Herbie is looking after the elderly Mrs. Steinmetz, the aunt of Jim’s mechanic. But in Herbie Goes Bananas, the car has essentially been abandoned by Jim. And instead of passing his loyalty on to Pete, Jim’s nephew, Herbie gloms on to some random pint-sized pickpocket. Is this the same car that tried to throw itself off a bridge after being rejected by Jim in The Love Bug?

By the end of The Love Bug, Jim Douglas has somewhat redeemed himself and proven himself worthy of Herbie’s affection. None of the characters in Herbie Goes Bananas deserve to own a magic car. Pete and D.J. react to Herbie’s abilities like they just discovered he comes equipped with heated seats. And Paco acts as though he’s in a remake of The Biscuit Eater or one of Disney’s countless other boy-and-his-dog stories rather than a Herbie movie. The other Herbie movies are blessedly kid-free. Herbie Goes Bananas demonstrates why.

To be somewhat fair, the cast does the best they can with this weak soup. The old pros, Leachman, Korman, Vernon, Rocco and Jaeckel, understand the assignment and act accordingly. Harvey Korman in particular is responsible for what few laughs the movie has to offer. On the other hand, Burns and Davalos, whose characters do eventually fall in love for some reason, barely register as the least exciting couple in screen history. As for Charles Martin Smith, he’s no Buddy Hackett or Don Knotts but he makes an affable if forgettable second banana (no pun intended). Smith will soon have a shot at redemption in a very different kind of Disney movie.

There is one other aspect of Herbie Goes Bananas that lands it near the bottom of the barrel and that’s the music, specifically the original songs by Frank De Vol (who appeared as an actor in The Parent Trap). The first, “Look At Me”, is a nondescript disco tune that plays in the background during the costume party. The second, “I Found A New Friend”, is played twice and that’s three times too often: twice in the movie and once more for when De Vol first played it for whoever decided to use it. If I were compiling a list of the all-time worst Disney songs, this thoroughly grating piece of work would easily be top-five material.

Herbie went bananas in theatres on June 25, 1980, the same day Disney released another bomb, The Last Flight Of Noah’s Ark. Maybe Ron Miller was trying to orchestrate some kind of everything-must-go fire sale. Critics hated it and audiences stayed away, presumably opting instead to see The Empire Strikes Back for the third or fourth time. It would appear that it was time to send Herbie to the junkyard.

And yet, Disney tempted fate a few more times. In 1982, Disney brought the franchise to television with the short-lived sitcom Herbie, The Love Bug. Dean Jones even came back as Jim Douglas and sang the theme song. Kevin Corcoran served as one of the producers and episodes were directed by Vincent McEveety and Bill Bixby. But even at home, audiences were done with Herbie. The series lasted all of five episodes.

When Disney began remaking their live-action comedies for television in the 1990s, Herbie came back yet again. But the 1997 version of The Love Bug was actually a stealth sequel with Dean Jones tossing the keys to, of all people, Bruce Campbell. It was an early credit for director Peyton Reed, who’d also directed the 1995 TV version of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and would later return to Disney via Marvel and the Ant-Man movies. I’m a little surprised Disney hasn’t capitalized on the cult potential of this entry. It has never been released on DVD and is not available on Disney+.

Because Herbie became such an iconic Disney star in his prime, it was inevitable that the studio would bring him back to theatres sooner or later. Eventually, this column will circle back to the Love Bug and its 2005 reboot, Herbie: Fully Loaded starring Lindsay Lohan. But for now, we’re going to have to send our old friend to the garage for a while. Herbie Goes Bananas was a dispiriting, if temporary, conclusion to his adventures that proved conclusively that the franchise, yes, I’ll say it, had run out of gas.  

VERDICT: Disney Minus

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