Review of Bumblebee (2018) by Ben B — 01 Jan 2019

Though having not viewed any previous Transformers movie as they mostly look over bloated and poorly made, I was fairly excited to see this new heartwarming adventure about a girl and her stranded robot friend. Despite producing a story much better than I originally hoped for, Bumblebee is not a perfect blockbuster but there is lots of great things about this film including Hailee Steinfeld's majestic performance and a few amazing moments. Embracing it's time period, Bumblebee does a surprisingly good job at setting the mood and clearly tells us that it's the 80's by slotting in some little 80's vibes. Hailee Steinfeld shines in this film and her character is a lot more interesting than the Transformers, to be honest. Steinfeld showcases Charlie Watson's emotional experiences really well and her connection with Bumblebee is brilliant, considering that he is essentially a robot, there is one 10 minute segment where we are introduced to her character and it's beautifully executed and really intriguing. That said Bumblebee is a very humourous character and his arc in this film is so great because he is oblivious and his chemistry with his newfound surroundings were brilliantly done. The standout scene of the entire film is when Bumblebee smashes eggs on a car, it is very clever and unexpected.

But not all the performances are good, John Cena was terrible in this film due to his corny and cheesy dialogue and familiar premise, his resolution was odd and weird. But there is some humour behind it all and I laughed frequently but it does great awkward when the jokes don't land. However, the action sequences look too convoluted and are too manic and try so hard to immerse you into the experience by using annoyingly loud explosions and sound effects that turn out to be utterly infuriating. The opening scene was badly framed and shot and it was really hard to see what was happening as well as containing poorly written dialogue which was filled with exposition and cartoonish visual effects, there was no back story behind this war and I never knew why the Decepticons were fighting the Transformers not to mention the fact that these villains were awful and filled with cliches and unknown motivations. This opening was really rushed when compare to everything fore after and felt like a odd beginning as nothing had been established yet. On the other hand, the final fight was a bore fest and I lost interest within the first two minutes of the section.

Luckily, these over bloated violent scenes are only featured at the start and the end allowing for a gorgeous and heartwarming plot to unfold but throughout these two scenes, the sound effects and score was really annoyingly loud and it got extremely tedious, however all the other smaller scale action scenes e.g. the car chase scene were really well done and executed and brought in unexpected tension. All the human characters are well written and work well which is a surprise as this is a robot film. The development is consistent and entertaining due to the depth of Charlie's arc and the emotional weight behind it all. Also, Steven Spielberg produced the picture and that is kind of shocking as this has a strong resemblance to Spielberg's E.T and can be easily compared to that movie. Apart from these few flaws, Bumblebee is a very entertaining film with a terrific lead performance by Hailee which carried the entire film for me. The dialogue is sometimes poor, cheesy or cringy and the opening and ending action sequences were bitter but apart from that, this new Transformer film is very enjoyable and me and my friend had a great time watching it despite its faults and few plot holes. It won't appeal to everyone but it will make fans happy and it's a sci-fi action-adventure with characters and story far more interesting and captivating than the visuals and fights. This was the my final movie of 2018 and it was a perfect sendoff.

Here in the U.K Bumblebee was given a PG certificate. This film was an easy 12A (even though 6 seconds were cut to achieve the age certificate) due to the amount of blood and wounds presented and as people were liquidised, the infrequent swearing and very intense segments that younger viewers will find stressful. The PG rating bothered me as I could see primary school children getting scared by this film and families going to see it thinking it's family friendly for younger children.