Bumblebee courts 1980s nostalgics (review)

Travis Knight’s style contrasts with that of Michael Bay. For good and bad.

Bumblebee, released in cinemas for 2018, arrives unencrypted on television. Precisely on W9. Here is our review.

Since Michael Bay took on the franchise transformers, in 2007, each episode was intended to be more spectacular than the previous one. Longer and noisier, too, the big spectacle becoming the watchword of this franchise which can be adapted as desired in different places and times. After five films, each of which was a big success at the box office, but the last of which had less impact on critics, the director became producer of future versions of his franchise inspired by the Hasbro toy range. Unsurprisingly, the very popular Bumblebee is the first to be entitled to its spin-off. If successful, Paramount plans many others… Is this variation worth it? It all depends on what you want from a blockbuster transformers. More aimed at children, this episode plays the 1980s nostalgia card to the fullest. After the heroes of SStranger Things or those of Ready Player Oneit is therefore up to the yellow robot to discover the 1980s, its pop music and its cult films, Breakfast Club on your mind. Assumed references, if not original: John Hugues’ classic has become an inevitable nod, when it comes to approaching this decade.

Too many explanations
The action therefore takes place in 1987. Fleeing his planet Cybertron after an attack (during which the Transformers never looked so much like toys, which is reminiscent of the animated series of the time, it is one of the beautiful ideas from the film), Bumblebee hides on Earth. His meeting with young Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld) will upset his plans. Changing into Ladybug, the robot sympathizes with the teenage mechanics enthusiast, who is struggling to mourn the loss of her father. A gentler approach than in previous opuses: this relationship is truly at the heart of the film, the director taking the time to become attached to the duo with the help of a succession of touching and funny scenes, before plunging them into full action. The actress seen in True Grit And Pitch Perfect 2 is excellent, and proves that she has the shoulders to carry this type of blockbuster. Too bad the rest is too phoney to completely work. The film will never stop explaining the origins of Bumblebee to us, a bit like Solo which answered all kinds of questions that we didn’t ask: where did his nickname come from, how did he lose the use of speech, how did he learn to communicate using his car radio etc. A process which also allows screenwriter Christina Hodson (who has since written the film on Harley Quinn) to explicitly cite the first transformers, which has been a fan favorite so far, which is alternately nice (the scene where the hero wreaks havoc in the living room) and too repetitive/explanatory. Without going into detail, the very end of the film is strangely constructed: a plan was clearly created to please the fans, but judging it obviously too unclear, it is explained a few moments later, at the start of the credits…

Soft action
The other weak point of Bumblebee, is that if the heroine is worked enough to touch the public, the secondary characters are more cliché: the smack-headed little brother, the mother in crisis with her teenager, the overwhelmed stepfather or the madly in love neighbor, but clumsy, are less well written than the young girl, which creates a rather awkward shift in tone. Finally, aside from the opening, Steven Knight never manages to impress with his action sequences. Far from offering fights as fluid as Michael Bay, he lacks ambition in his staging, offering ordinary camera movements, which follow his characters in a way that is not always clear. As a result, this brings out the false side of the fights, created 100% digitally. It’s all the more a shame since he was expected in this field, having broken into animation at Laika, notably thanks to Kubo and the Magic Armor (2016), critically acclaimed.