For the first moment after walking out of Bumblebee I thought it was kind of good. But as I tried to figure out what I liked about it, I realized I couldn’t find more than one or two things that stood out. Sure, it makes sense. Most of the acting is fine, and the central performance is good. Neither of the leads exist only to be ogled. There are even a couple jokes that work and real people talk with other real people more than robots fight each other. It’s even less than two hours long (by a hair). Those are all things that Bumblebee delivers. So, if you go in with the standards of the Transformers franchise, you might be tricked into thinking this is a good movie. But it is a step in the right direction, so I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad movie. Bumblebee takes us back to 1987 for the origin story of the titular franchise-favorite character. He is sent to Earth by Optimus Prime following the Decepticon takeover of Cybertron, with a mission to create a safe-haven for all Autobots. Once there, he is found by Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld), a girl about to turn 18 and dealing with the premature loss of her father a couple years earlier. This sets up an interesting dynamic between her and Bumblebee as they both deal with tragedy and fear in different ways. She educates/trains him to live among humans and discover his past, while he serves as a father figure, protecting her and building her confidence. That relationship is only explored in a couple scenes though before the film loses focus shortly into the second act. As expected, there is a love story, Decepticons are on their way, and a government agency is in the middle investigating all of it and taking the (understandable) ‘kill it first, ask questions later’ approach to these giant talking robots. The Cybertron stuff is fine as a way to drive action and create stakes. That's the table stakes; understood and necessary. But the rest could be sacrificed for more focus on the main characters. Bumblebee provides the catalyst for Charlie’s character transformation, making the love story unnecessary. The government scenes felt like a set-up for more sequels and even then, they could have been shorter or less frequent. I would have loved to see a road movie with the two leads running away from just one of these villains. Steinfeld provides a strong anchor to the film, giving what could be a difficult character emotional depth and doing her best to sell weak jokes. But even she can’t give life to the absurd and overly-telegraphed moment when her ‘hidden talent’ needs to be called upon to save the day. The rest of the cast is fine, with John Cena and Pamela Adlon as expected stand-outs, although I would have liked to see Adlon get more comedic material, especially since outside of Cena the cast struggles with it. Jorge Lendeborg, Jr. is promoted to love interest after strong supporting work in Love, Simon but he can’t quite make it work. The character is just not compelling to watch and Steinfeld seems to be propping him up as she does the rest of the film. The actual action works. With Michael Bay out of the director’s chair, the fights are all more comprehensible than they have been since at least the first Transformers and don’t feel forced into the story at random points, with one exception. The opening scene efficiently uses a big battle to set-up the plot and give the audience what it wants instead of the usual 10 minutes of ominous expositional voiceover from Optimus Prime. Short action scenes are effectively used to follow the main villains, checking any urge to make every single fight last for five minutes. Even the third act avoids being too overstuffed and endless by providing a break between two fights. Clearly taking the lead of other mid-late 20th century period films, Bumblebee has a prominent and well-curated soundtrack, but even that gets distracting and over-used. The comedic moments throughout the movie aren’t as painful to watch as other bad action movies, but there are only a couple laughs to be found among the countless attempts. Most of what works is because of the delivery of Steinfeld or Cena, as his character’s inconsistencies between strict military guy and occasional jokester work in his favor, if not the story’s. But the movie doesn’t feel the need to interject comedy into every single scene and undercut dramatic moments, so the failed jokes don’t actively take away from other things. Overall I wish they had focused as much on just Bumblebee and Charlie’s relationship as the premise promised, as that could have been a good origin story by itself, just peppered with some of the improved action scenes. While many of the franchise-specific urges are reined in, there's still plenty of typical blockbuster mis-steps here to keep it from rising further.
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