Auto placement in movies is one of the most fascinating identifiers of character. Among films now playing, The Jacket runs what might be the best ad for the Volkswagen Beetle—at least until Herbie: Fully Loaded hits theaters this summer. The hero of The Jacket, Jack Starks (Adrien Brody), can see into the future—and knows he's changed one woman's life for the better when he looks ahead and sees her driving a new-model Beetle. One might wonder why Naomi Watts isn't given a star car in DreamWorks' The Ring Two. At first we figured the generic, circa-'70s Detroit model was all she could afford on her Oregon country journalist's salary. But then we saw the scene (spoiler ahead) in which her car is attacked by a herd of crazed deer. Surely no manufacturer wanted to be treated so dishonorably (and only an old car would take such abuse without deploying an airbag or two). In Be Cool, the Honda Insight hybrid gets a spirited plug by the story's hero—"It's the Cadillac of hybrids," John Travolta says when questioned by a dubious Danny DeVito. But it is also the butt of comic cutaway shots that suggest it might not really be the car he'd choose for dating-and-driving. "Be Cool was orchestrated by Tom Peyton at Honda," says Larry Postaer, principal at Honda agency RPA in Santa Monica, Calif. "I think Cadillac put more behind it than even Honda. Certainly in the case of Akeelah and the Bee [an upcoming movie starring Laurence Fishburne] and all other movie placements, we ciphon and screen for all the implications. It's never just Hollywood calls and we say yes."