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The Love Bug
US sales of the Volkswagen "Beetle" probably took a serious spike after the release of the 1968 Walt Disney fantasy The Love Bug, a zany comic romp that provides plenty of laughs despite a screenplay filled with some serious holes.
Dean Jones plays Jim Douglas, a down on his luck race car driver, who finds himself the owner of a an old used Volkswagen, that seems to have a mind of its own as it deserts its owner, the evil Peter Thorndyke (David Tomlinson) and follows Jim home where Jim's best pal Tennessee (Buddy Hackett) becomes immediately aware that the car has a mind of its own, even though Jim and Thorndyke's ex-secretary (Michele Lee) might have their doubts.
For undiscriminating kids in 1968, there is a lot of fun stuff going on here, but as an adult viewing this film for the first time since my childhood, there's a whole lot that goes on here that's difficult to swallow. Are we supposed to believe that no one watched this car follow Jim home from Thorndyke's dealership with no driver in it? Are we supposed to believe that Jim and Carole don't believe the car has a mind of its own after it traps them in the car and sets them up on a date? Are we supposed to believe that the car knows how to squirt oil on Thorndyke's shoes?
Even if we're able to overlook all this and accept this boy meets car love story, it doesn't make sense that after the halfway point of the film, the car seems to completely lose the mind that we've finally accepted and allows Thorndyke to sabotage the car over and over again? Are we supposed to believe that Thorndyke pours Irish coffee into the gas tank and the car gets halfway through a race before it starts to malfunction? And why don't JIm and Tennessee guard the car with their lives before the big race, which allows Thorndyke to almost completely destroy the car, which again doesn't fall apart until the end of the climactic race.
Despite all of this, I can see why this movie was such a monster hit in 1968. Robert Stevenson's energetic direction is aided by some dizzying camerawork along some very narrow highways and Cotton Warburton's editing. Jones proves why he was one of Disney's favorite leading men and Tomlinson was the perfect mustache twirling villiain. Several familiar faces pop up aliong the way like Joe Flynn, Gary Owens, Herb Vigran, Iris Adrian, Joe E. Ross, and Ned Glass. It's definitely starting to creak around the edges, but really young kids might still find some laughs here. The film inspired several sequels and a 1997 remake.
US sales of the Volkswagen "Beetle" probably took a serious spike after the release of the 1968 Walt Disney fantasy The Love Bug, a zany comic romp that provides plenty of laughs despite a screenplay filled with some serious holes.
Dean Jones plays Jim Douglas, a down on his luck race car driver, who finds himself the owner of a an old used Volkswagen, that seems to have a mind of its own as it deserts its owner, the evil Peter Thorndyke (David Tomlinson) and follows Jim home where Jim's best pal Tennessee (Buddy Hackett) becomes immediately aware that the car has a mind of its own, even though Jim and Thorndyke's ex-secretary (Michele Lee) might have their doubts.
For undiscriminating kids in 1968, there is a lot of fun stuff going on here, but as an adult viewing this film for the first time since my childhood, there's a whole lot that goes on here that's difficult to swallow. Are we supposed to believe that no one watched this car follow Jim home from Thorndyke's dealership with no driver in it? Are we supposed to believe that Jim and Carole don't believe the car has a mind of its own after it traps them in the car and sets them up on a date? Are we supposed to believe that the car knows how to squirt oil on Thorndyke's shoes?
Even if we're able to overlook all this and accept this boy meets car love story, it doesn't make sense that after the halfway point of the film, the car seems to completely lose the mind that we've finally accepted and allows Thorndyke to sabotage the car over and over again? Are we supposed to believe that Thorndyke pours Irish coffee into the gas tank and the car gets halfway through a race before it starts to malfunction? And why don't JIm and Tennessee guard the car with their lives before the big race, which allows Thorndyke to almost completely destroy the car, which again doesn't fall apart until the end of the climactic race.
Despite all of this, I can see why this movie was such a monster hit in 1968. Robert Stevenson's energetic direction is aided by some dizzying camerawork along some very narrow highways and Cotton Warburton's editing. Jones proves why he was one of Disney's favorite leading men and Tomlinson was the perfect mustache twirling villiain. Several familiar faces pop up aliong the way like Joe Flynn, Gary Owens, Herb Vigran, Iris Adrian, Joe E. Ross, and Ned Glass. It's definitely starting to creak around the edges, but really young kids might still find some laughs here. The film inspired several sequels and a 1997 remake.