When Transformers: The Last Knight (or as I came to call it The Last Straw) trundled into multiplexes last year it wasn’t so much a case of “Autobots, Roll Out!” as “Autobots, Roll Over!”. Overlong, overstuffed and over-shit, the nearly 3 hour behemoth couldn’t be over quick enough, taxing the patience of even the most undemanding Transformer fan as Michael Bay’s final entry in the series often felt like an actual physical assault that left me wondering how to press charges. To be fair, the franchise had been routinely testing my final nerve for a while now with the (still pretty kick-ass) original being followed up with sequels that grew more leaden and painful with every release and it has become fairly apparent that these form changing robots were in dire need of a change themselves.
So it’s with a Cybertron-sized amount of relief that I can report that Bumblebee is most likely the best Transformers release to date and a damn good movie in it’s own right as it plays into a huge aspect of the original toy line that no other entry in the franchise has thus-far utilised – the frickin’ 80’s, baby!
Ordered to flee the fricking awesome civil war raging on his home planet of Cyberton by his commander, Optimus Prime, Autobot scout B-127 crash lands on earth only to stir up a secret military unit named Sector 7. While desperately trying to prove that his fiery arrival is actually the first part of a peaceful mission, B-127 is intercepted on earth by villainous Decepticon agents. During the scuffle Bumblebee suffers memory loss, is rendered mute and after taking the form of a Volkswagen Beatle (finally!!!) shuts down only to be found by troubled teen Charlie, who is mourning the loss of her dad and in desperate need of new transport. Charlie fixes and inadvertently activates the cuddly, Disney-eyed Autobot, whose injuries have left him with the temperament of a timid puppy, but also manages to attract the very unwanted attention of a couple of enemy spies, namely the vicious Shatter and the violent Dropkick. The two Decepticon bastards, in an effort to make their search go faster, approach Sector 7 with a bunch of robo-bullshit about how B-127 is actually an enemy combatant which is eagerly lapped up by a vengeful Colonel Jack Burns even though giving Earth’s satellites over to the control of alien robots is a monumentally bad idea.
However, B-127 – now helpfully dubbed Bumblebee by Charlie – is happy to bond with his new friend as the two heal from the loss of their respective father figures and leave the Cybertronian wars far behind him. Of course, war is coming to find him whether Bumblebee likes it or not and if he’s going to protect his new friend and the possible whereabouts of Optimus Prime, he’s going to have to grow back his metallic balls and fight.
After the deafening roar of The Last Knight failed to kick off a connected Transformers universe, it turns out that to course correct such a maligned franchise, all you had to do was take the first movie, wring all the Michael Bayisms out of it that you possibly can, (bye bye war porn, questionable racial stereotypes and transformer genitals) and concentrate almost all the focus on the Spielbergian nature of a teen and her car bonding plot. Essentially taking the warm, wholesome essence of E.T., Harry And The Hendersons, Short Circuit and countless other 80’s family movies and using it to make the Transformers flicks play nice, Bumblebee is such a blast of fresh air, it could pass as an industrial-sized can of Frebreeze. Of course, a good script, good characters and a much-needed sense of restraint also helps but one of Bumblebee’s many secret weapons is Kubo And The Two Strings director, Travis Knight, a man obviously deeply invested in the history of the 80’s toy line as evidenced by the orgasmic fanboy reaction caused by not only having the Transformers finally embrace their G1 roots more fully, but also knocking our socks clean off by opening the film with the Cybertron-set battle sequence we’ve all dreamed of.
While it must be said that the basic premise is hardly groundbreaking as it takes the more overtly Spielbergian elements from the 2007 movie, but the more focused plot gives us something way more enjoyable and touching than the CGI splurges of movies past. An utter purge of The Last Knight’s ridiculously convoluted “secret history” plot (featuring ‘B’ fighting in WWII) proves to be stunningly beneficial and what we end up with is a family film that harks back to Amblin’s heyday but with way cooler explosions.
Hailee Steinfeld is magnificent, balancing the teen angst of watching her overprotective mother fall in love with a new man with the comedy chops necessary to babysit a 16 foot, banana yellow, alien warrior and she nails every scene she’s in. Elsewhere, John Cena looks like he’s legitimately having the time of his life as the buttoned down Colonel who is alarmed that no one else sees the huge red flags that spring up by joining forces with robots who openly call themselves Decepticons.
While everyone here does a bang up job, it’s obviously Bumblebee himself who is the real star of the show. Shorter, rounder and achingly adorable, this earlier Bumblebee is a vulnerable, earnest leading man with bright, blue, tea cup saucer eyes and naturally he absorbs our adoration and empathy like a magnet. Even the overused gimmick of him finding his voice via talking though the radio is rehashed and refreshed to great effect, actually providing a source of character beyond Bay’s cheap gags as our custard-coloured hero takes advantage of some true, 80’s bangers including, in a resplendent in-joke, The Touch by Stan Bush.
In fact, the whole 80’s vibe may actually be the best thing about the film, not only giving out toy-accurate, retro designs of a huge swathe of cameos from the sizable Transformers cast (Soundwave, Ravage, Shockwave Cliffjumper, Arcee and more all pop up), but also giving us such sights as Bumblebee taking quite fancy to that iconic fist pump after multiple watches of The Breakfast Club.
The only real issue concerning Bumblebee is that at times it seems reluctant to fully pull the trigger on whether or not it’s actually a prequel, a soft reboot or a completely hard reset, which could probably lead to some confusion for those not keeping score. While Bumblebee’s arrive pretty much contradicts everything seen in the franchise so far, the fact that our hero ends the movie as a Camaro and we get an introduction to that cagey, government taskforce known as Sector 7 kind of muddies the waters a bit. Also, those going in expecting Bay levels of scale may be dismayed at the slightly stripped back nature of the action – even though it’s far easier to follow.
So transform your expectations and hook back up with an old friend, because Bumblebee is back. Believe the buzz.
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