Kind, innocent Bumblebee, a robot who transforms into a yellow Camaro and back again, is the most beloved Autobot in the “Transformer” series. If he could sing, he’d sound like Rod Stewart. Why? Take a look at Bumblebee’s soulful baby blues. It’s not possible to get any more “blue-eyed soul” than he is.
And Bumblebee’s likeability is partially why this origin story, while sixth in the “Transformers” series, is arguably the best movie of the lot.
“The franchise will continue, but it now needs a gritty upgrade to retro. It needs to be un-Michael Bay’d. This fourth “Transformers” installation is over-long, over-done, and over-titled. It needs to get back to the Harley-Davidson philosophy, which is—they got it right the first time. Stay vintage. Keep the Autobot automobiles of the 1970s muscle-car variety. And don’t high-tech everything just because you have more RAM.”
Well, while I’m at it, let me paraphrase myself some more: “The first ‘Transformers’ was an instant American pop-movie classic. It established the Transformer formula. A Transformer movie must have four things: The machinery and cars must look cool; there must be a long-legged jail-bait female of stunning visage (tanned); there must be green cornfields and orange sunsets; and there must be nearly poetic teen dialog such as, “Dude, she’s an evil jock-concubine.”The Not-Megan Fox
Let’s get real. Megan Fox was the real reason all the young dudes loved “Transformers.” Foxy Fox, the muscle cars, and the cool robots. This is a boy movie series; boys played with the Hasbro Transformers toys; boys crushed on the bombshell Miss Fox; and it appears that director Michael Boy, I mean, Bay, has a surname that may just be misspelled.So in “Bumblebee,” the replacement jail-bait teen girl is Hailee Steinfeld, which is very shrewd casting. Because, unlike Fox, Steinfeld is a world-class actress, springing fully formed from the forehead of Pallas Athena (more like the beard of Jeff Bridges) in “True Grit,” and not only establishing herself as a zeitgeist channeler of her generation’s teen angst, but also morphing into a bona fide pop-star of rare, seductive, vocal ability. And she’s no slouch in the jail-bait department.
So while she’s tomboyish and in bombshell-stealth-mode, if you look closely, Steinfeld handily nails the “Transformers” job requirement of “long-legged jail-bait female of stunning visage.” How so stealthily? Because she’s not sun-tanned. But she does share Megan Fox’s precocious grease-monkey mechanical ability, a concept that is very thrilling to all ages of boys, even ones in their 90s.
Origin Story
Chances are, regardless of your age, you must’ve seen one of the six “Transformers” movies by now, so you know who Optimus Prime is, yes? So you probably therefore also know Bumblebee already.Except you wouldn’t recognize him, because instead of the 2007 Camaro he later becomes, he started off as an early-1970s VW Beetle that’s been sitting around a junkyard long enough for bees to start building honeycombs behind his rearview mirror. Wait, bumblebees don’t make honey. Honeybees do. Well, it’s more like, you know, honey is sweet, bees are yellow, Bumblebee is yellow, he’s got honey in him, therefore—he’s sweet. It’s sort of like a “Transformers” syllogism.
What’s he doing in a junkyard? That’s maybe the fifth requirement of a “Transformers” movie: Dust-covered vintage vehicles that have been sitting a long time in barns and such are not what you think they are.
Bumblebee is actually B-127, a rebel Autobot sent here by his fearless leader, Optimus Prime, to scout out new planetary digs in the ongoing interplanetary war with the Decepticons, who destroyed the Autobot planet of Cybertron.
For the newcomers unfamiliar with Decepticons: You know that movie company Bad Robot? It’s got that freaky red robot? That’s a Decepticon. I’m pretty sure. Anyway—bad robots.
B-127 touches down here ‘round about 1987, in the form of a very small comet, near a U.S. military base, the personnel of which naturally chase him around in armored trucks featuring large land harpoons.
Shortly after, a Decepticon trackerbot catches up with Bumblebee and rips out his vocal chords (such as they are). It’s here that he goes to ground as the aforementioned yellow junkyard VW Bug, somewhere on the California coast.
The junkyard belongs to the granddad of one Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), teen girl mechanic-geek. Like a sort of gorgeous Gollum, she wants to claim (for her birthday present) this Bug, as her “precious.”
And while rolling under the Bug on one of those mechanic skateboard thingies, she glimpses a curious visage staring back at her, above the muffler and the drive shaft.
This Movie’s Bad Robots
There’s no rest for the weary, and Bumblebee’s got two nasty Decepticons on his tail: Shatter (Angela Bassett) and Dropkick (Justin Theroux), who transform into the most muscled-up versions ever of a fire-engine-red Plymouth Satellite and a blue AMC Javelin, respectively.
They also furthermore transform into a red F-4 Phantom fighter jet and what looks to be a blue Cobra gunship helicopter, respectively, and the latter enjoys splatting humans with his galactic zapper (the effect of which looks, PG-13 appropriately, like a soap-bubble popping). As he remarks, “I like the way they pop.”
On the nice guy side, there’s Charlie’s geeky next-door neighbor and classmate Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), sporting a 1970s Afro and a schoolboy crush.
Iron Giants
That’s what all these Autobots are, really—they’re iron giants, sort of like the one in the children’s cartoon movie of the same name. And like that relationship of Hogarth Hughes and Iron Giant (brilliantly voiced by Vin Diesel), Bumblebee and Charlie have a similar friendship.“Bumblebee” reflects the trending offerings on social media: our current preoccupation with videos featuring cross-species bonding. We’re enjoying watching a lion, tiger, and bear (oh my!) that grew up together and now, as their 800-pound furry selves, frolic about together. We like the one about the dog that swims out to meet his friend, the dolphin, to frolic. Then there’s the one of an actual Bambi and an actual Thumper caught on video, jumping around together on someone’s lawn. It’s endless. It’s also very Steven Spielberg, who happens to be the producer.
So what’s the point? Humans will befriend metal aliens someday? No, I think it’s just a timely, if perhaps unintended tribute to the current discovery by Facebook that we like to watch all kinds of sentient beings frolicking together and living in harmony. They’ve even given Bumblebee extremely expressive, waggly dog ears that prick with curiosity, and get laid back when Bumblebee shifts into angry, fight mode.
For the next installment, I’d like to see Charlie and Bumblebee do karaoke at a bar, where Bee sings Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May,” and Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga are in the audience. This movie will be titled “A Star Is Transformed.”
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