“Herbie: Fully Loaded” is a triumph of advertising. I stumbled out of it burning with an uncontrollable desire to buy a Volkswagen, watch NASCAR, and sleep with Lindsay Lohan, in about that order. My hat’s off to the Imagineers at Disney: this time they’ve aimed low … and scored!

Directed by a former Kim’s Video employee, Angela Robinson, and written by five screenwriters who are, between them, responsible for “The Country Bears,” Vin Diesel’s “The Pacifier,” and the Jimmy Fallon/Queen Latifah vehicle “Taxi,” this isn’t just a remake of 1968’s “The Love Bug” but a sequel to all seven Herbie movies.

Like many older stars, Herbie finds himself forgotten and consigned to the junkyard, waiting to reinvent himself by hooking up with a younger actress. Enter Maggie Peyton (Lindsay Lohan), poured into a series of disconcertingly tight t-shirts. Her dad (Michael Keaton) owns a race-car team and talks incessantly about his dead wife. He tries to lift the mood by buying Maggie a car, and she winds up with Herbie, whose lovable antics quickly win him a place in her heart.

Herbie is practically human. He rocks back and forth autistically when he’s upset, his antenna springs to attention when he sees a pretty lady Volkswagen, and he squirts oil on Ms. Lohan’s chest when he’s excited.

Maggie gets on the wrong side of a NASCAR champ, Trip Murphy (Matt Dillon), who taunts her into “racing for pinks,” which means that the loser surrenders their vehicle to the winner. Maggie loses Herbie to Trip, and learns a valuable lesson about honesty.

New Yorkers will be chilled to learn that there is a circle of automotive athletics that even NASCAR enthusiasts look down on: demolition derby. It is to this arena of vehicular carnage that Herbie is consigned by the evil Trip, and in a scene right out of “Deliverance” Herbie is forced to “squeal like a pig” at the hands of a monster truck. Fortunately, Ms. Lohan discovers her true feelings for Herbie and rescues him from a fate worse than death, just in time for the big race.

The humor in the film consists entirely of people falling down, being hit on the head, or falling down and then being hit on the head, and it requires an ace cast to pull it off. While Ms. Lohan limits her performance to a number of high-frequency squeaks, Michael Keaton spends the film squinting expressively, as if he is searching the horizon for a better movie. Ms. Lohan’s chaste love interest is played by Kevin Long, who was last seen having his eyeballs devoured in “Jeepers Creepers,” and Maggie’s brother, Ray Peyton Jr., is played by Breckin Meyer, who brings to “Herbie: Fully Loaded” all the chops he developed in work like “Garfield: The Movie.” The characters don’t so much develop as become increasingly encrusted with logos, and you, too, will want to eat Cheetos, drink Tropicana, and use a Nextel phone, just like them.

Trust me when I say that if you attend “Herbie: Fully Loaded,” you’ll enjoy it more if you are fully loaded, too.