Mark Reviews Movies: BUMBLEBEE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 20, 2018

Even before the movie begins, everything is stacked against Bumblebee. It's yet another entry in the consistently bad Transformers series, which, at this point, is a collection of five movies in which the best installment is barely mediocre.

It's a prequel to boot, telling what would seem to be an unnecessary story about the eponymous Autobot's arrival on Earth from a war-torn Cybertron. This also means that the movie is an origin story, and those have become frequent and routine, whether they're about a superhero or a transforming robot based on a line of action figures.

Despite the obstacles, Bumblebee turns out to be a surprise. It's easily the best entry of this series, although, considering the competition, that's not exactly a compliment. It's a legitimate movie—with solid characters, a comprehensible story, visual effects that both are discernible and actually serve the storytelling, and a genuine sense that the filmmakers care about at least one of its robots as more than a means of showcasing widespread destruction.

Again, all of this sounds like damning with faint praise, but it's important to establish how this film stands out from its predecessors. They set such a low bar, though, that any praise is going to sound half-hearted.

To get around this difficulty, let it simply be said that this is a good film. It would be a good film even if it stood on its own and not among a group of bad movies. It may be based on a line of toys, but you'd almost never guess it, considering that its robotic star becomes an actual character with a distinct personality and an arc that sees him progress from a scared alien life form to a genuine hero.

Most importantly, though, the film has a heart, which is something that has been sorely missing from all of its predecessors. Those movies wanted us to become invested in the ongoing battles between two factions of alien robots, who supposedly possess sentience and souls, but the movies never bothered to convince us that the robotic characters had a spark of life or spirit within them. The filmmakers were too busy showing off their fighting, shooting, and transforming skills to even bother with such a thing.

Bumblebee, though, is different. At the start, he's fighting for the future of Cybertron with Optimus Prime (voice of Peter Cullen), the leader of a resistance group battling against the evil Decepticons. Someone here, by the way, finally points out how on-the-nose that name is, which points to the fact that Christina Hodson's screenplay recognizes how ridiculous this material is (Just about all of the mythology, thankfully, is absent from this installment). What's important is that she doesn't dismiss it as being entirely silly.

The robot goes into hiding on Earth circa 1987, is attacked by a pursuing Decepticon, loses his ability to speak (Dylan O'Brien provides the character's voice before this), and suffers memory damage to his system. Additionally, Bumblebee makes an enemy of Agent Burns (John Cena), who is nearly killed in the fight between the big robots.

Sometime later, Bumblebee is discovered in a junkyard by Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), a girl who has just turned 18, is still grieving over the death of her father a year ago, and desperately wants a car. She's a mechanical whiz, and after getting a junk car in mostly working order, Charlie discovers that the German subcompact is actually a robot in disguise.

The basic setup of the story is familiar. Charlie has to hide Bumblebee from other people, fearing that he'll be captured and taken apart if discovered. This isn't especially hard for Charlie, who is a loner and isn't particularly happy with the way her mother (played by Pamela Adlon) and younger brother (played by Jason Drucker) have moved on with life after her father's sudden, unexpected death. Her mom's new husband (played by Stephen Schneider) isn't exactly a father figure to her, either. Obviously, the teen needs a friend, and if that friend comes in the form of a robot that can turn into a car and drive her around town, that's all the better.

Hodson and director Travis Knight actually spend time forming the bond between heartbroken human and frightened robot. It's a surprisingly touching relationship, treated tenderly and sincerely (Their first act of communication has Charlie raising her hands, only for the robot to gently place his face in one of them). That's partly because of Steinfeld's invested performance, but it's also because of the effects team's work in making Bumblebee a character, not just a convincing visual effect. With his wide eyes and expressive physicality, Bumblebee always appears to have something going on inside that robotic mind.

There are, of course, the necessities of such a story, especially one that's part of a larger series with future events to establish. Bumblebee is being hunted by a pair of Decepticons (voiced by Angela Bassett and Justin Theroux), who believe he can lead them to Optimus Prime, and Burns eventually joins the hunt, too. The subplots provide the film with the requisite action sequences and a destruction-heavy climax, but they never get in the way of what really matters here.

That's the most surprising thing about Bumblebee: Unlike all of its franchise forebears, something does matter here. We care about Charlie, figuring out how to accept a major loss, and about Bumblebee, lost and scared and reaching out for someone to understand him. That we care about the bond between these two characters is a pleasant surprise, but that we care about the characters in this particular movie series is a downright shock.

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