BUMBLEBEE (2018) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

bumblebee (2018) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   PG

Running time   |   114 minutes

Released         |   20 December 2018

cast

Hailee Steinfeld ... Charlie Watson
John Cena ... Agent Burns
​Peter Cullen ... Optimus Prime (voice)

director

Travis Knight

writer

​Christina Hodson ... (screenplay)

cinematographer

​​Enrique Chediak

music

​​Dario Marianelli

film editor

Paul Rubell ​

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box office result

Worldwide               $? million

Australia                 $? million

North America        $? million

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the best dialogue

Optimus Prime: Bumblebee, our war rages on. You must protect Earth, and its people.

Agent Burns: [to Charlie and Bumblebee] Don't run. Do *not* run.
[Bumblebee runs off, carrying Charlie]
Agent Burns: She ran.

​Memo: The darkest nights, produce the brightest stars.

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BUMBLEBEE (2018) MOVIE IMAGES

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Posters

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Posters

BUMBLEBEE (2018) STORY SYNOPSIS

​On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee the Autobot seeks refuge in a junkyard in a small California beach town. Charlie, on the brink of turning 18 years old and trying to find her place in the world, soon discovers the battle-scarred and broken Bumblebee. When Charlie revives him, she quickly learns that this is no ordinary yellow Volkswagen.

BUMBLEBEE (2018) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 26 December 2018

​Pop ​Movee Rating

Consensus among those who have already had the chance to see BUMBLEBEE is that Director Travis Knight has struck a winning balance between the frenetic dynamic of Michael Bay’s five TRANSFORMER films and the nostalgia fans have for the 1980s animated series upon which the franchise is based. Put simply, BUMBLEBEE is the TRANSFORMERS movie that fans have been waiting for… The added benefit is that casual moviegoers will find an equal measure of joy in this origin tale about one of the more important and much loved TRANSFORMERS characters.

For the uninitiated, BUMBLEBEE opens with a relatively quick recap of the TRANSFORMERS backstory. Optimus Prime, the heroic leader of the Autobots, and his team of freedom fighting “BIG” robots are locked in a to-the-death struggle with the tyrannical Decepticons on their planet of Cybertron. At the moment when all seems lost, Optimus Prime gives his youngest recruit, B-127, the task of keeping Earth safe in order for the surviving Autobots to gather and regroup on the remote planet.

Things don’t quite go to plan…

B-127 is met with fierce military force upon his arrival in the form of John Cena’s Agent Burns, the head of a top secret government military team whose job it is to keep America safe from all kind of threats, including extra terrestrial. To make matters worse for the young Autobot, the Decepticon Blitzwing tracks B-127 to Earth. A fight ensues and while victorious, B-127 has his voice control savagely ripped out just before he can dispense with his enemy.

On the verge of complete shutdown, B-127 scans a beat-up old yellow VW parked nearby and then collapses…

The most impressive aspect of this extended opening sequence is how well the action is staged. The viewer can see everything going on and understand who the good guy is and who the bad guy is… This has not always been the case with Michael Bay’s TRANSFORMERS films. Bay has preferred to blur the action and focus on the colour, movement and spectacle of these huge machines battling each other as the tiny humans around them scuttle in all directions, attempting to avoid annihilation.

To be clear,  that’s not a criticism of Bay’s films…

The TRANSFORMERS movies are spectacular. Yes, they’re made to appeal to the broadest possible audience, but neither the animated series before them or Bay’s movies were never marketed for elitist cinema connoisseurs. Bay has made a career of going over-the-top and his movies prioritize the visual elements above everything else. However, after five huge adventures, a change of direction in the franchise is not unwelcome.

What is refreshing about BUMBLEBEE is the effort made by Director Travis Knight and screenwriter Christina Hodson to pare back the large-scale set pieces and focus the story on the story’s characters…

Hailee Steinfeld is Charlie Watson, a young adult in her final year of High School, struggling to come to terms with the death of her father. Charlie is not one of the cool kids. She works at a local fast food stand serving her more well-to-do peers, she’s struggling to accept that her mother has moved on with a new partner and she spends most of her spare time unsuccessfully tinkering with her father’s classic sports car. Her persistence in trying to get the car running leads her to discover a beat-up yellow VW bug at the local junkyard. Desperate to have a set of wheels for her birthday, she tries to convince the owner of the junkyard to sell her the car. He declines her offer, instead, gifting it to her and wishing her a “Happy Birthday”!

Knight doesn’t mess about with getting “Bumblebee” back into the action. Within a few minutes of getting home with her new car, Charlie realises that there’s much, much more than meets the eye about her little yellow Bug…

Steinfeld and her CG co-star are central to the film’s success, but the array of supporting characters help to fill the story out, providing the the viewer plenty of options to both cheer and jeer for!

Wrestling fans love John Cena and he’s well cast as Burns. Cena’s character starts off as a real douche bag and it’s really easy to not like him. As the story unfolds, Burns slowly but surely becomes more benign, realising that Bumblebee can help the assembled military might in their counter-attack against Dropkick and Shatter, two Decepticons who have been sent to Earth to locate and destroy any Autobots who have gathered on the planet to reunite with Optimus Prime.

Jorge Lendeborg Jr. plays Memo, Charlie’s neighbour who’s determined to show he can help her and prove that - perhaps - he’s worthy of her affection! Memo is a sweet, slightly nerdy throwback to the type of character that would have been completely at home in a John Hughes film… As it turns out, there are a great many references to Hughes throughout, as the story is set 1987 at about the time his films had reached their absolute zenith. THE BREAKFAST CLUB is cited repeatedly, with Judd Nelson’s famous closing fist-pump receiving special attention.

Steinfeld also gets a 1980s Spielberg-inspired family, with the widowed mother, the precocious brother and the new-to-the-family boyfriend for mum who doesn’t quite fit in yet. The film dervies a great of its human drama from Charlie’s fluid family dynamic and actors Pamela Adlon, Stephen Schneider and Jason Drucker do a nice job of making the relationships feel real despite the out-of-this-world subject matter. BUMBLEBEE does have some fleeting moments of classic Spielberg, such as the Charlie and Bumblebee’s parallel relationship to Elliott and E.T., THE GOONIES style misadventure and the assorted background references to movies like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Whether deliberate or not, Travis Knight pays homage to Spielberg, BUMBLEBEE’s Executive Producer, as much as he does John Hughes.

BUMBLEBEE is not so much a course correction for the TRANSFORMERS movie franchise…

It’s a fresh start.

It’s not a classic, but it hits just about all the right notes, striking a balance between character, story and action. If nothing else, BUMBLEBEE proves that a visual effects driven movie doesn’t have to descend into an incoherent whir of colour and sound for it to be entertaining. Quite the contrary… It’s BUMBLEBEE’s restraint that proves there’s plenty of life left in the TRANSFORMERS franchise and there’s still more left that hasn’t quite yet met the eye!

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BUMBLEBEE (2018) USEFUL LINKS

​Bumblebee (2018) - IMDb
​Bumblebee: The Movie - Wikipedia
​Bumblebee - Movie Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes

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