Combining grand sci-fi action and bombast with a tone that’s cheekily silly and unapologetically sweet, Bumblebee is what the Transformers movie series should have been the entire time.
I tapped out of the Michael Bay movies after three (sorry, Mark Wahlberg as Texan inventor Cade Yeager [neither of which is a goddamn name]), but even in our current cinema landscape of countless lackluster blockbusters slapped together in post-production, there is still something almost impressive about just how insulting, just how stupid, just how jaw-droppingly, misanthropically hateful the juggernaut franchise based on a children’s toy commercial about nice robots who turn into cars fighting bad robots who turn into cars really was.
Bumblebee, now available to buy and rent on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD, is a course correction that might unfortunately prove to be too little, too late. A soft reboot/prequel (more on that in a second), the Travis Kubo and the Two Strings Knight-directed film follows the same rough template as the 2007 Transformers, except with actual storytelling competence, radically improved designs and characters and, oh yeah, one other missing ingredient: This is a Transformers movie that doesn’t have open hatred for Transformers, or naked, hostile contempt for the entire human race.
So that’s a nice little change.
Bumblebee opens at the Fall of Cybertron, with the noble Autobots, led Optimus Prime (voiced as ever by Peter Cullen), realizing that the war is lost against the monstrous Decepticons. As his forces scatter to the stars, Optimus asks young Autobot soldier B-127 (voiced, briefly, by Dylan O’Brien) to sneak to Earth and make sure the planet and its inhabitants are kept safe so the Autobots can regroup there.
But things go haywire on Earth almost from the start, as B-127 accidentally crash lands on top of a military exercise being led by Lieutenant Jack Burns (John Cena). Burns and his men are, understandably, a little freaked out by the giant robot alien with cannons for arms, but riiiiiight as B-127 is starting to get things under control again, a Decepticon scout brutally attacks him, ripping out his vocal cords and badly damaging his memory functions. Barely alive, B-127 transforms (natch) into the shape of a crappy yellow Volkswagen Beetle, and goes into hibernation.
He might’ve stayed unconscious forever, except the Volkswagen is discovered and claimed by Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), an 18-year old fledgling mechanic who takes a shine to the ‘death trap’ Beetle. Her repairs snap the Autobot back to life, but without his memories and no longer able to speak.
Rechristening her car/robot as “Bumblebee,” Charlie starts showing him the Earthling ropes, a job that grows more complicated as Bumblebee’s antics cause problems for Charlie, her neighbor Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), and her mother Sally (Pamela Adlon) and stepfather Ron (Stephen Schneider).
And as if all this wasn’t enough, another batch of Decepticons arrive on Earth looking for the lost Autobot scout.
From a narrative standpoint, Bumblebee isn’t treading any ground that isn’t already extremely well covered. You will have most every major plot point in the film figured out relatively early, with little in the way of surprises on that front. When Charlie establishes early on that she used to be a competitive diver but she gave it up after her father died…well, let’s just say your mind will not be blown by what the third act action finale calls upon her to do.
But Bumblebee is a strong example of how execution and personality are more than enough to compensate for a lack of narrative innovation. Christina Hodson’s script hits the required sci-fi/action beats, but she and Knight are happy to take the scenic route to get to those moments. Long stretches of Bumblebee play as a shaggy comedy story, as Charlie and Memo pal around with the child-like Bee, and this material works so well that it’s almost a shame whenever the movie cuts away to build up the intergalactic and military threats. But even in these sections, Hodson finds the humor and grace notes that make the material sing (it helps that Cena, a performer who is becoming more and more confident onscreen with every role, is the one entrusted to carry this portion of the movie. Cena’s at his best and loosest when directors let him play to the comedy inherent in his cartoonish build, and he’s clearly having a grand old time).
As someone with a background in animation, Knight is immediately comfortable with iconography and design, and while the look of the robots this time out pay enough homage to the mechanized clusterfucks featured in the Bay films that you could tie this film to those if you wanted, Knight places the emphasis on clarity and character. When Bumblebee is standing still, you can actually discern different body parts from one another and quickly realize which direction he’s facing. A decade into them making these movies, this shouldn’t be a triumph, but there you fucking go. The best tool in Knight’s arsenal this time out is Bee’s wide, blue eyes. Combined with the soft, round edges of the revamped Bumblebee design, he’s just about the cuddliest killer robot ever put on screen, so well-realized you forget for long stretches that you are looking at a CGI creation. You simply accept him, and his subsequent bond with Steinfeld’s Charlie.
Actually, I take it back. The best tool Knight has to play with is Steinfeld herself. She was such a charming discovery back in True Grit, and she’s only gotten stronger as she’s grown older and more experienced. Charlie’s struggle to make peace with the loss of her father and accept the new family dynamic of her mom’s remarriage could have been a rote distraction (no one buys tickets to a Transformers movie because they are invested in the human squabble occurring between robot tussles), but Steinfeld is so innately compelling a performer, and her family problems depicted with such a deft, humane touch, that it’s more compelling than any of the robotic skirmishes going on. Like, Decepticons and Autobots can do whatever the hell they want, what I care about is whether or not Charlie and her mom patch things up!
For the most part, Bumblebee is content to be a small-scale charmer, more concerned with an amiable vibe and charming characterization than loading up on rock ‘ems and sock ‘ems. Eventually that stuff does get pushed to the forefront, and you can practically feel Knight struggling to find some fresh spin he can put on the classic ‘turn off the skybeam’ finale. For as much goodwill as Bumblebee has earned by that point, it can’t quite bring all the pieces together into a perfectly realized whole, which leaves the tail-end feeling slack.
But honestly it’s tough to blame Knight and his team, since it sure seems like part of the problem was the studio being unsure whether or not to treat Bumblebee as a prequel or a clean break from everything Bay did. Again, I dropped out of that series a while ago, but my understanding is that the Transformer-Civil War material that bookends the film more or less annihilates any continuity ties, while everything on Earth has to carefully tiptoe so as not to violate anything established by the Shia Era (there’s even a younger agent hanging around in the Cena scenes who I guess is supposed to be the John Turtorro character earlier in life). It honestly feels like they shot the entire movie as a prequel, realized at the last second that they had something way too good to waste as a chaser on the Michael Bay nonsense, and hurriedly dubbed new dialogue onto the first and last few scenes to cut ties completely.
Maybe if they’d known going in that they had more room to play, Bumblebee wouldn’t feel quite as handcuffed as it ultimately does, unable to quite take off and live up to its full potential.
If Bumblebee ultimately feels like it falls just short of true greatness, that shouldn’t detract from how good it otherwise often is. There’s a warmth and kindness of spirit to this film that feels radically at odds with not only the previous films in this franchise, but with the snarky attitude of so many of its contemporaries. Bumblebee has tons of humor within it, but never at the expense of its characters or their physical/emotional journeys. More shocking is the gentle soul underpinning all the frenzied action. It’s that gentleness that gives away that this is the work of the same hand that shaped Kubo, and it makes Bumblebee distinct from virtually all its blockbuster brethren.
Bumblebee was somewhat overlooked when it came out in December, sandwiched between other giant blockbuster franchises that weren’t coming off a decade-plus of rank shit before bothering to put out a solid installment. It’s a shame that that had to happen to this film, but I hope that word will spread and the audience will grow.
There’s no question that this is the mold from which all other Transformers movies should be made. Bring it on. After Bumblebee, for the first time ever I am excited by these characters and this world. Fingers crossed this first time is not the last.
