Bumblebee (2018)

For the first time in the six films in the franchise thus far, the reins of a Transformers flick has been given to someone whose name is not Michael Bay.  In the case of the spin-off prequel (and likely continuity reboot, if successful) Bumblebee, the person in charge is Travis Knight, the director responsible for the wonderful stop-motion animation film, Kubo and the Two Strings.  Working with a script from Christina Hodson, Knight doesn’t really hit a home run again in his sophomore effort, but the bar for entertainment in this series is sufficiently low enough for most viewers to come away pleasantly surprised with the results, and perhaps many will also feel it’s the best film in the Bay-formers series altogether (by quite a large margin, in my opinion).

This time out, the character of Bumblebee ends up going back to his original look from the toy line and cartoon series of a Volkswagen Beetle, when he arrives on Earth back in 1987 as part of a last-minute escape plan for the Autobots on Cybertron to find an inhabitable planet as theirs is about to be destroyed in an all-out civil war with the Decepticons.  Bumblebee ends up emerging in California, where his dormant state of the Beetle laying in rust in a junkyard, in hiding after being hunted by Sector Seven (the government agency who first discovers him), draws the eye of a troubled teenage girl named Charlie Watson, who views the car as freedom and an opportunity to follow in her recently deceased father’s footsteps by repairing two damaged precious things – the car, and herself.

In the process of repairs, the “robot in disguise” known as Bumblebee reveals himself to be a shape-shifting robot who has lost his ability to speak, his voice box shattered in a skirmish with two Decepticons who also traveled to Earth to destroy him and every other threat they perceive necessary for them to eventually colonize the planet.

Steinfeld makes for a solid protagonist, as she has wonderful acting range, not getting lost in the shuffle of a popcorn sci-fi actioner, and is likable without being overly cartoonish.  Her connection to the robot is crucial for the film to work, and it’s to her credit that she finds the right tone, especially as she could not act against the finished product comprised entirely of CG elements.  Lendeborg makes for a fine sidekick, and potential love interest (thought he feelings are uncertain to go both directions), and adds to the human dimension that might have been sorely lacking with so much robot mayhem on the screen.

The CG work here is excellent, blending in with the live-action elements without much notice, so much so that many viewers may not even stop to consider it.  But unlike entries in the main Transformers series, the action sequences are the culmination of the plot elements set up from the beginning, rather than just having plot elements to set up prolonged robot-smash-robot action sequences that go on for twenty to thirty minutes at a time.

And what makes it better than your run-of-the-mill Michael Bay Transformers film is that Bumblebee is cohesive, watchable, and is sometimes even engaging. We haven’t gone so far as to actually care a great deal about the characters, but at least they aren’t grating to the point where we hope we never see them again.  If there’s a sequel to this film that features the same characters, I’d be genuinely interested, which is refreshing if you’re like me and consider every single human character in the main series to be annoying to the extreme, and largely uninteresting to follow.

The film takes advantage of the period, featuring tropes from well-known movies of the era. Obviously, a sentient VW Bug will immediately make the Herbie films come to mind for many older viewers.  Some who are a tad younger will draw comparisons to 80s-era films like E.T., Flight of the Navigator, and the slew of misfit child bonding with an “other” to find meaning in a world that doesn’t much understand either of them.  As with other films of the decade, adults are either useless, embarrassingly out of touch, or threatening, and only other misfits will truly understand the plight of the protagonists enough to assists them.  As there is a familiarity overall to the story, especially in the wake of other similar movies recently like Big Hero 6, the only thing that really makes it remarkable is the fact that it is a Transformers franchise film that deviates from the formula.

Beyond my perpetual peeve of aliens understanding and speaking English as their main language before ever making contact with Earth, the one thing I didn’t quite understand in Bumblebee is the notion that the VW Beetle is a piece of junk and an eyesore to everyone else.  Having been nearly the same age as Charlie in 1987, I can assure you that just having a car at all was a cool thing, and the classic VW was a very cool car to own, even if it wasn’t in tip-top condition. The only misstep, in my estimation, is a final transformation involving Bumblebee at the very end of the film, which tries to tie in the spin-off with the series at large (somewhat established by Charlie’s connection with Camaros). As the film doesn’t quite jibe with information we learn from the Bay series (for instance, it was established that Bumblebee had come to Earth much earlier than the 1980s), there really isn’t a strong need for this tie-in, especially in a sequel set twenty years prior to the events of 2007’s Transformers.

Song selection is generally great, mostly because we’ve had more than enough separation from the decade to know which songs are considered to have stood the test of time.  There’s plenty of homage to The Smiths in particular, which were considered more an alternative or niche band at that time in the 1980s but who’ve amassed a much larger following in the years since then.  There are a few anachronistic elements employed that take you out of the film if you know the era: Rob Base’s “It Takes Two” came out a year after when the film is set, and Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” was not released in the United States until 1988.  Some of the dialogue also uses modern terms not exactly known back then either: carjacking, for instance.

Will Bumblebee be the much-needed injection of adrenaline into a sputtering franchise to keep it going for another five films?  Only time will tell.  At least Transformers fans will finally have a live-action film that seems to be made by people who actually enjoy their favorite toy characters and their cartoon and comic book counterparts from the 1980s, rather than view them as silly and in need of a major overhaul to put explosions and destruction at the forefront.  Bumblebee is a robot with humanity in disguise.

Qwipster’s rating: B

MPAA Rated: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action violence
Running time: 114 min.

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., John Cena, Jason Drucker, Pamela Adlon, Stephen Schneider, Ricardo Hoyos, John Ortiz, Glynn Turman, Len Cariou, Angela Bassett, Justin Theroux, Peter Cullen, Dylan O’Brien
Director:  Travis Knight
Screenplay: Christina Hodson