A Boy's Deep Empathy for a Volkswagen

There's a scene, in "Herbie Goes Bananas," where Herbie, the Love Bug, is perceived, by the clueless grown-ups around him, to have wreaked havoc a cruise ship headed from Puerto Vallarta to Cartagena, and as a result, he is forced to "walk the plank," plunging into the Pacific, "crying" (as we found out through some "extra feature" mini-documentary about the movie) by honking long and mournfully. Of course, he floats, rather than sinking, and goes on to save the world from the attempted theft of an Inca gold artifact, undertaken by three cheesy Gringo guys in 70's business suits. There's a painful period of plunging and "crying," followed by triumphant flotation and the march toward a happy ending.

When the scene came on yesterday, during our hurricane-time movie marathon, Ian commented;

"Some people think it's the saddest scene in all the movies, including me."

Then he went on to point out, in light of the scene that follows, that it's also one of the happiest.

(August 28, 2011)