Bumblebee is a fascinating construct. It is a stripped-down and toned-down Transformers movie, one that removes most of the glossy excess and frat boy vulgarity typified by the Michael Bay franchise. Those films were often hyper-intense, needlessly raunchy, occasionally ultraviolent, usually overlong and unapologetically huge. Even in a world where the MCU thrived and Harry Potter was winding down, the Transformers movies still made a point to be bigger than any ongoing franchise out there, and up until the previous installment they were over/under $1 billion-per-movie mega-hits. Helmed by Travis K. Knight and penned by Christina Hodson, this 180-degree turnabout is such a reaction to the prior Transformers movies that it makes Justice League look like an uncompromising artistic statement.
That’s not to say Bumblebee is a bad movie. It is often a very good one. But beyond its surface pleasures, it exists as a Russian Doll-worthy nostalgia machine, one that pines for the kind of movies that IP-specific, four quadrant and mega-budget blockbusters like Transformers helped kill. It is also mournful/nostalgic for a time when movies based on properties like Transformers were both somewhat rare and not expected to rule the global box office as a matter of course. Like last year’s surprisingly good Power Rangers adaptation, Bumblebee is financially restrained, and thus has no choice but to create a polished motion picture that puts character over spectacle and plot, even primal formulaic plot, over action.
Set in 1987, 20 years before the first Transformers movie, this prequel (or soft reboot, depending on the global grosses) concerns an 18-year-old teenage girl named Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld) who is having a tough time. Like Steinfeld’s protagonist in The Edge of Seventeen, she’s struggling with the unexpected death of her dad (a heart attack is to blame in both cases) and is lashing out at her mother and sibling who seem to be coping better than her. There are a few surface-level similarities to that underseen 2016 gem, at least as many as Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern shared with Ryan Reynolds’ Van Wilder way back when. This is another example of straight-up genre offered with a protective IP.
Charlie Watson eventually procures a random 1967 Volkswagen Beetle a birthday present. Sure enough, the car is actually an Autobot in hiding, having been sent to Earth by Optimus Prime following a devastating loss on Cybertron. If you’ve seen the first Transformers, or especially if you’ve seen E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial or The Shape of Water (minus... well, ya know), you can guess how this plays out. Yes, the young girl and the scared car/robot become fast friends, and yes the unlikely duo eventually become targets of both an understandably distrustful government (personified by John Cena) and at least two diabolical Deceptions (Angela Bassett and Justin Theroux) who would love to eradicate any hiding Autobots and/or the population of Earth in general.
It's a girl’s coming-of-age story this time, and the gender swap justifies the movie beyond IP extension. This differentiates it from most of the movies to which Bumblebee pays homage, including Shia LeBeouf’s first “boy and his car” Transformers flick. Charlie gets the hero’s journey usually reserved for young men, with a tag-along love interest (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), an entertainingly obnoxious younger brother (Jason Drucker) and a broken family (headed by an underused Pamela Adlon) that needs mending. The picture plays out like a hybrid of The Iron Giant, Monster Truck and A.X.L., with the bitter irony that many folks will consider this movie unique precisely because they ignored those IP-free films in theaters.
Bumblebee is an entertaining, well-made and relatively intelligent kid-friendly fantasy adventure. Like Power Rangers, it holds the action in reserve so it can blow its budget in the third act. This is a much smaller-scale picture than any of the previous Transformers movies, but what’s there is top-notch and occasionally clever. Steinfeld gives another strong movie star performance, while Cena underplays a good man who flirts with villainy after witnessing what these Transformers can do. He also gets a killer joke that I’ve been dying to hear in any Transformers property. Knight directs Hodson’s solid screenplay with a steady hand and a confidence that makes this purpose-driven picture feel comfortable in its own nostalgic skin.
The characters are appropriately charming, even if it never ventures into riskier territory. Even A.X.L flirted with the idea of a poor teenager abusing the power that came with having a robotic war machine as a new best pal. Minor nitpick, but it continues an odd trend of (minor spoilers) casting a minority as the love interest but not letting the couple get to first base. There is also a needless sequence where Bumblebee trashes the Watson family home, a seemingly consequential act (are alien robot attacks covered under home owner’s insurance?) that mostly gets treated as comedic mayhem. But these are the kind of nitpicks that stand out in an otherwise well-made and well-thought-out franchise title.
Michael Bay’s bigger-than-the-rest Transformers movies remained event movies until folks stopped using bigger = better as a measuring stick for theatrical value. In a world where folks only go to event movies, Bumblebee tries to be an unconventional event movie by staying small. While folks will talk about this as the Transformers movie you’ve been waiting for, it can only get away with being so close-to-the-ground precisely because we already got five larger-than-live mega-movies. Had this been the first Transformers, we would have had complaints about the lack of Transformers action, the lack of Cyberton (Is Masters of the Universe the most influential fantasy movie of the 1980s?) and a general lack of marquee Transformers characters.
Bumblebee is arguably a Transformers movie that could only have existed (and thrived) right now. We’ve had an entire generation’s worth of super-huge Transformers movies, and we’re at the point where a mega-bucks IP cash-in that overdoses on action and spectacle is no longer a de facto event movie. The gender swap creates a fine contrast with the previous Transformers movies while offering young girl’s their own coming-of-age fantasy flick. Most importantly, not only is Bumblebee pretty good, it is pretty good in precisely the way that will get fans excited about seeing a more conventional Transformers movie set in this specific continuity. I’m not just talking about the fan-friendly prologue sequence, but don’t show up late.
Be it a prequel, a spin-off or a soft reboot, Bumblebee is the X-Men: First Class/Batman Begins that Paramount/Viacom and Hasbro needed. We’ll see if it came just in time or, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, if it arrived just too late. I don’t know whether the world needs more Transformers movies, but as long as they are this good, then why not? If the world now requires a super-popular IP for a coming-of-age melodrama/kid-friendly fantasy, then Bumblebee is a mitzvah. Whether or not it’s the best Transformers movie (it is, even if I missed the shoot-for-the-moon madness of Age of Extinction), Bumblebee saves both our world and the Transformers series in one fell swoop.
