Bumblebee

(★★★✩✩)

THE Transformers movie universe has lately been leaky and rusted out. It’s become shorthand for bad blockbuster movie-making – male-driven, mindless spectaculars with sophomoric humour. How can it be saved? Just hand the keys over to some talented women. Bumblebee, the sixth film in the series, is a stand-alone origin story written with disarming skill by Christina Hodson and starring the gifted Hailee Steinfeld. It’s a charming tale of a girl named Charlie, and her adorable car-robot, flipping the script on the tired, bloated franchise. While hard-core fan-boys may complain it’s too soft, this film may turn out to be the perfect way to save Transformers.

Hodson and director Travis Knight (Kubo And The Two Strings) take full advantage of the film’s late-1980s setting to give us visual and audio jokes.

Hits by Bon Jovi, Duran Duran, a-ha, Tears For Fears and Wang Chung are sprinkled throughout. (Bumblebee turns out to be quite a good music critic, too, hilariously rejecting some of Charlie’s options). Die-hard franchise fans also get to hear the power ballad You Got The Touch that appeared in the 1986’s animated Transformers film. (Well played, filmmakers.)

Audiences either tired or turned off by the franchise’s past rigidity and addiction to spectacle will appreciate Bumblebee.

This is what we needed: Smaller, quieter, more human and sweeter. –