4 out of 5

Directed by: Travis Knight

This is a really good, really fun movie, though maybe not a truly great one. But seeing as how I gave the original Transformers three stars – for all its vacuousness it entertains – Bumblebee deserves a ratings bump for being leagues ahead of that film, and surely, up to this point, the best in the franchise. It almost annoys me to think that we could’ve had a series of movies like Bumblebee, instead of the returns-diminished-immediately splatters of nonsense and effects we got, but that’s too simplistic: the other movies succeeded because they were what the audience wanted at the time. Who knows how Bumblebee would’ve fared without the “pedigree” of films that led to it? So I’m happy we at least got one flick like this.

Jumping the setting back to the 80s, the opening of Bumblebee is 1. Another CGI-fest of battling robots, similar to any of the preceding movies, 2. immediately better than any of those, with followable choreography, actual visual storytelling, and exciting action. This draws one to a key ingredient of Bumblebee’s success: hiring a director who’d come from animation, and especially one from one of the top tier studios – Laika. While the movie’s script occasionally lets us down with emotional shorthand and logic leaps, it’s made up for a hundredtimes over in how it tells its story in the frame, and with its characters. The pacing, of especially the comedy but also the drama, is so on point throughout that you are liable to be swept up in the 80s adventure vibes even without any kind of informing nostalgia buzz; that is, the E.T. vibes of this work not because director Travis Knight (and his animators) make any particular nodding reference to that movie – or Iron Giant, or etc. – but because the filmmakers’ knew how to follow the filmmaking lessons of those films and their makers. It’s been a while since I’ve so easily laughed at a movie’s gags, or got that lil’ heart swell at an emotional scene.

Bumblebee otherwise essentially follows the plot of the first movie: a Transformer crashes to Earth; is discovered and befriended by a human; goes through hijinx as said human tries to keep the robot out of sight; then has to juggle fending off government types and the inevitable Decepticon hunters who come a’hunting. Some clever workarounds allow this to be a prequel and not interrupt the “canon” of the later movies; Knight also brilliantly uses the 80s setting to ditch the obnoxious Bay-designs of the ‘bots – the pouches-on-pouches Rob Liefelding of their look – and go back to the classic cartoon styles, but obviously with bits and bobs that look great when rendered with CG, and man does that stuff just read better on the screen. I’ll allow that all the gizmo add-ons of the Bay bots could be conceptually cool, but it made them very hard to “read” as characters, and required more and more add-ons to bring human characteristics back in in later entries. The streamlining here allows for instant bonding with Bumblebee, but also with any of the Transformers we see in the intro, and similarly allows the designers to nail the evil vibes for our villain robots.

This smart reworking carries over to the action: not only are things followable, as mentioned (and I do appreciate that Bay did not enforce his style onto Knight), but – my god – the action generally feels justified. When robots jump around and flip-flop, it’s for leverage, or to make use of their size; when they transform, it’s to get somewhere faster and not just to look cool. This all goes into why the opening is so refreshing in comparison to the rest of the franchise, and it’s incredibly satisfying that that carries through the rest of the movie.

Hailee Steinfeld plays our human, Charlie, suffering through almost-18ness with a mom and soon-to-be stepdad (Pamela Adlon and Stephen Schneider) – who absolutely mean well but have trouble connecting with their daughter / step-daughter – and a younger brother (Jason Drucker) who seems to be soaking up that youngest-kid spotlight. But much more importantly: all seemed to (from Charlie’s perspective) have completely gotten over the loss of Charlie’s dad, whom she mourns by working on the broken-down car in the garage. Bumblebee (voiced by Dylan O’Brien), crashlanded and having lost their voice and had their memory fractured, is found at the junkyard by Charlie and prized as a fix-‘er’-up way out of town. But the fixing-up process brings out the Transformer…

Kudos to scripter Christina Hodson for tying the two characters together through, essentially, the loss of family, and the struggle for identity. These seem like basic narrative building blocks, but it’s a shock how many movies miss out on them – and especially those in the ‘formers franchise. Steinfeld additionally brings boatloads of humanity to Charlie, with the animation (and O’Brien’s vocalizations) matching her beat for beat, emotionally. (As a side note, this is where the comparatively lower budget does show in some places, though, as the human / ‘bot interactions are a little dodgy, but thankfully, Knight knows to keep this limited.) Hodson / Knight add little payoffs like this throughout the film, keeping Charlie’s / ‘Bee’s arcs very tight.

That’s less true for the side characters – the government, as represented by an army colonel played by a game John Cena; Charlie’s flirtacious next-door neighbor, played by Jorge Lendeborg Jr.; Charlies’ family – with Lendeborg Jr. especially having to rush through all the meet-cuteisms and not really finding a strong voice for his role. The script has fun subverting these tropes a bit, and Cena is honestly great at showing The Rock it’s okay to be a bad guy, but nonetheless, if all of the arcs are essentially predictable, only Steinfeld gets the room to add actorly extras to it. Thankfully… she’s in almost every single scene.

But all in all, the statement above about following in the footsteps of the classics stands: those movies are all pretty predictable as well, but they lasted because they were made to stand the test of time. They’re just made well. And Bumblebee, while absolutely having its own film identity under Knight’s helming, gets to sit in that same camp of very rewatchable greats.

Ah, I guess I just did call the movie great then, didn’t I?