Transformer movies by Michael Bay has been all about explosions and twists that it has, as per our taste, has been boring already. They thought that bigger explosions, faster pacing, more screaming would push the next movie to be liked by us movie goers. We feel that it has veered off from story in itself. This is why we held off watching the previous transformer films prior to this one.
Now this movie, Bumblebee is an origin film of sorts. Although some say its a reboot since we are fatigued already with the Michael Bay films, we felt that this one is an origin, pre-quel and a reboot at the same time.
Just to clarify before we go on, we are not Transformer fans thus we shall take it on its entertainment level and with some "we hope to connect this with the others" kind of movie.
Now growing up to the animated shows of Transformers, we know you will love this film altogether. All your favorite or known characters are shown in Cybertron with near copy rendition of it at the start of the film. So you will definitely love the nostalgia right off the bat, with less Michael Bay explosions (He is not the director of this).
When Bumblebee finally arrives on earth, the movie goes "fish out of water" mode so you will get some funny scenes with him. More like the movie ET way back in the 1980s. An alien stuck on earth, bumbling his way, until a boy (in this movie a girl) keeps him and teaches him how to blend in and all the while would like to "call home". Throw in some "bad" government person pursuit shit, they are similar right?
Let me get back to Bumblebee as this is the storyline here.
As we made a relation to ET, this movie does not excite us as much as to the storyline. What we were excited about was the visual rendition of the robots here. They were simple in design, rustic, typical of the animation series and not complex like that we know of today. Kudos to the director who made this approach. A fresh reboot so to speak. We do hope they continue with this, however we felt that it altered somehow the timeline if you try to connect this with the Michael Bay Transformer Universe. So take this movie as a stand alone movie and hope it creates a multiverse from hereon. I would appreciate this more than the previous ones.
Now going to the actors who graced the Bumblebee movie. This is by far Hailee Steinfelds' best work yet. She shined in Pitch Perfect as a dumb blonde but it wasn't enough to showcase her real talents. During her first half of the film she did not shine, but when push comes to shove in the end, truly her acting improved and we liked it a lot.
Sadly it was just Hailee whom we saw who really carried the movie along with Bumblebee. The rest of the cast was simply coasting along. Hailee's love interest or the "bumbling sidekick" in Jorge Lendoborg as Memo is forgettable here. Can't blame him, as the storyline can do without this character. We felt he was just brought in the story to provide some comic relief and some semblance of a romantic angle (similar to Lebeouf and Fox) but the writers did not give him such a juicy role to make us believe that he is really part of the story. John Cena as a soldier is great. So great so much, he should just stand there and we get it. Once he moves and talks, that's another matter. The story did not create a story line for his role thus he was another "should be part of the movie to provide a diligent soldier following orders then don't in the end" character. Another always "bad guy" in the movie is John Ortiz. I always see him as such in previous films that I already knew he will fumble along the way. Unlike in other films, he finally knows he was wrong and dies anyway. He somehow asks forgiveness from the viewers for being so naive when he said it.
Overall, Hailee and Bumblebee we saw this as an ET film with a touch of Herbie in it. If they did put in a racetrack, I would expect the number 69 on Bumblebee's hood. This is the best Herbie movie we've seen so far. A great reboot and a fresh take from the Michael Bay fatigue we had. I suspect a multiverse in the works as this would jolt the Transformer universe already set forth unto us by Michael Bay.
If you ask me if we liked the movie, despite the faults we mentioned, the movie is entertaining taken as it is. A really worth it watching kind of a film. Again, the best Herbie movie yet, better than the one lead by Lindsay Lohan in 2005.
