Bumblebee: Film Review

Bumblebee: Film Review

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Dylan O'Brien, John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr
Director: Travis Knight

Essentially an origin story for everyone's favourite Transformer, the clumsy Bumblebee, Kubo and The Two Strings director Travis Knight's relatively stripped back approach to the noise and bombast of the Transformers series actually pays charming dividends.

Set in 1987, with Cybertron fallen, Optimus Prime sends Bumblebee to Earth to set up a base for the Autobots to stop the Decepticons. But when Bumblebee loses his memory, he finds himself in a town near San Francisco and stuck in a VW form. Stumbling across Bumblebee is Charlie (Steinfeld), a on-the-cusp of eighteen outsider, who's struggling after losing her dad.

These two form a friendship, but the Decepticons are soon hot on their tail, intent on wiping out the Autobots for good....

It's easy to be cynical about Bumblebee, a film that really doesn't need to be made.

Starting with the fall of Cybertron, and then grounding Bee on Earth and saddling him with an 80s setting, complete with the tropes of an eighties alien invasion film, it's easy to dismiss Travis Knight's intentions as puerile for a franchise that's largely until now, been clothed in sturm and drang.

Yet, there's something pleasingly earnest and charming about Bumblebee, a film that embraces its innocence and gives it a kind of Spielbergian 80s family vibe throughout, and meshes it with the Herbie overtones.

Sure, there are one too many triggers here and there from the overuse of 80s music, to the shoehorning in of references, but the clearly ET influenced plot works nicely as this earnestly acted, occasionally underwritten and oddly cliched here and there buddy movie progresses along.

Smartly settling on less Transformers and subsequent clutter and feeling like an episode of the 80s TV cartoon delivers a stripped back approach for Bumblebee; one which feels like a pleasant ride in many ways, as it juggles the comedy (largely from Cena's gung ho military jock) to the heartfelt relationship between the two. Equally, the actual transforming action benefits from a crisp clarity of vision and not so much overkill - and there's much to love from the expressive CGI eye work too.

All in all, Bumblebee is a film that benefits from being about a Transformer, not about the Transformers - it's an important distinction, and while it won't win any creativity awards, the decision to make a film in this franchise breathe a little more is a more than welcome change of robot pace.