Bumblebee movie review: Can one Autobot save the Transformers franchise?

Hailee Steinfeld and Bumblebee join forces to save the Transformers franchise from Michael Bay. But is the heartfelt effort too late for rescuing?

A lot can be said about the legacy of all five Transformers movies. The first one, in particular, had just the right amount of immature humor to keep from becoming a complete disaster, and enough coherent action to leave fans chomping at the bit for more. Unfortunately, the same sentiment cannot be said for the rest of the franchise.

While Dark of the Moon had some game-changing 3D spectacle, most of the sequels suffered from incoherent plotting, a weird perversion towards underage women (especially in its cinematography), jarring racial undertones, and action sequences that felt pieced together by a child on Adderall. Sadly, by the time the series hit The Last Knight, it was clear that Michael Bay stopped caring and the audience knew it.

Which is what makes writing this review all the more painful. Bumblebee is not only the first great Transformers movie, but it’s also one that has so much heart–and judging from the weekend’s numbers, it seems everyone is afraid to give it a chance. Fans have been begging for a great Transformers movie for years, and now that they have one, they are too scared to reward the studio for listening. If this fails, this may never come to pass again–which would be a shame.

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Directed by Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings), the film stars Hailee Steinfeld as Charlie– a young girl growing up in the 80s who is still grieving from the loss of her father.

In the movie, she’s the rebellious one in the family living how she wants and refusing to accept that her mom is seeing another man. Her grief also makes her standoffish with the popular crowd making her feel even more alone. She does, however, have wicked awesome taste in music with one of her favorite bands being The Smiths.

Throughout the first moments of the film, she is working her tail off to afford a car on a shoestring budget. That is until she comes across a mysterious Volkswagon Beetle that turns out to be the famous Bumblebee.

Problem is, Bumblebee was in a vicious fight with Decepticons just before meeting Charlie, and the resulting ambush left the Autobot unable to speak or without a memory of who he is. So, when they find each other, he is just as terrified of her as she is of him.

This movie further shows how great of a director Travis Knight is becoming. His stop-motion film, Kubo and the Two Strings was hands down one of the best films of 2016. Here he carries the same heart with the characters in this movie and even makes the robots feel human.

I’ve heard some complaints that the script follows extremely close to the plot of E.T. and while that is mostly true, one can find a ton of great influences within the film. The biggest one that stood out for me was Pixar’s robotic masterpiece Wall-E. 

The way that film utilized minimalistic character expressions to convey emotion and story was undeniably powerful. There wasn’t a single moment where a viewer could not understand what Bumblebee was either feeling or experiencing.

Another relief this film provides is that it finally treats the female leads in the movie as a person rather than a sexual object to drool over. Hailee Steinfeld is such an underrated performer and her character of Charlie is so fully realized.

In the hands of Michael Bay, she would’ve been in skimpy outfits and treated as one dimensional. But here, Travis Knight really gets into her emotional core and treats her character with dignity.

In addition to this, the story is truly heart-wrenching at times. It takes experience to make grief feel authentic, and between the writing and Hailee Steinfeld’s performance, you really feel for her. Deeply rooted in Bumblebee is a coming of age story about a girl dealing with loss by finding comfort in a true friend. Whether you find it derivative or not– it’s just refreshing to finally feel something in a Transformers movie.

I can’t stress this enough–Bumblebee deserves to be rewarded. We have received so many bad films in this franchise and for this one not to be successful would send a bad message to Paramount. Get out and see this movie and support good films. Because if this one fails, we may never get another quality Transformers film again. Bumblebee has a huge robotic heart and it deserves to be shared with fans everywhere.

Bumblebee is now in theaters.