I Watch Films: Bumblebee
Is it unfair to suggest that they made a good Transformers film by taking the good parts of previous Transformers films and then replacing the poorer parts with better? Perhaps unfair, but maybe true. So the love affair of a teenager for their car and a cool girl who’s a mechanic get reused, but this time combined to make the protagonist (and with less shots lingering on her bum). Bumblebee is too big and awkward as a robot, and causes problems in Charlie’s personal life. The embarrassing and difficult family are there, but given a sharper edge, as Charlie’s father is dead and although her step-dad tries, he’s not helping.
There’s a bit of unnecessary Bumblebee backstory, about losing his voice and memory and ability to scan and transform (hence why he ends up in a boatyard as a wrecked 2CV) that we don’t really need. I suppose it establishes the Decepticons as villains and Bumblebee (still B-127) as a physical underdog who wins by guile and cunning. It’s set in the 80s, the heyday of Transformers as toys/cartoons which is nice, it’s nice that my childhood is now the past that we can laugh at. Well, really a fantasy of California we can laugh at rather than my actual Home Counties childhood.
Anyway, this is a perfectly good transforming-robot-action-comedy, with a touch more heart than most and less of the stuff that drags down the previous ones. Maybe a little less of the weirdness-out-of-nowhere that some of the other Transformers films had, but still a bit of that.
Watch This: For some sweet robot/car teenage-girl buddy action
Don’t Watch This: If more heart and less confusing robot fights still won’t get you to care.
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