Picoreview: Bumblebee

Picoreview: Bumblebee – this is a great Girl And Her Horse movie.

I loved Bumblebee when I first saw it in the theatre, except the night we went, so did about 15 incredibly obnoxious teenagers who obviously didn’t really want to be there and who were unbelievably loud and rude and giggly and stupid through the first half of the film, after which they either left or were kicked out, I can’t remember. So mostly I didn’t hear any of the first half and really liked the second half, and I’ve been meaning to watch it again ever since, except actually I’m quite bad at REMEMBERING to do that so it’s taken me, er, six years.

Anyway, yes, it’s a genuinely terrific Girl And Her Horse movie, with the part of the horse obviously being played by beloved 15 foot tall voiceless transforming sentient alien robot Bumblebee, everybody’s favorite Transformer*, and the part of the girl being played by Hailee Steinfeld, who we all know has grown up to be Hawkeye.

It’s got a pretty good emotional core, with Steinfeld’s character having lost her father (look! they killed off a dad instead of a mom!) a few years earlier, a mother and brother who seem to have moved on, and an annoying stepfather who honest to god gives her a book on the power of SMILING MORE. Like, totes cringe. She puts her feelings into trying to fix the Corvette she and her father used to work on together, ends up finding a memory-wiped Bumblebee hiding out in VW Bug form, and adventures ensue.

John Cena is the slightly-brighter-than-his-compatriots human face of The American Bad Guys–he’s the one who gets the very best line ever uttered in any Transformers movie ever, i.e., “They literally call themselves Decepticons. That doesn’t set off any red flags?”–and Angela Bassett voices the genuinely sinister-sounding Decepticon Shatter.

It is, in my opinion, easily the best Transformers movie ever made, and I would really love for Steinfeld’s character to have to come back into that world and renew her bond with Bumblebee. The biggest problem with that is that it’s a period piece, set in 1987, and any really viable sequel would presumably have to be set in the 90s, because it would be silly to try to make 27-year-old Steinfeld much older than she actually is. I personally think that would be not only fine but actively GREAT. Apparently Transformers: Rise of the Beasts was at least nominally a sequel (it was set in 1994, among other things), but it was UTTERLY DREADFUL, so we’ll just pretend that didn’t happen and make a play for Bumblebee 2, ok?

*don’t lie to me. even if he’s not your FAVORITE, you’ve got a soft spot in your heart for Bumblebee.