Bumblebee (2018)
It was going to take a pretty special outing from the beings who are "more than meets the eye" to make me forget all the missteps made by several of the previous films.
I'm happy to report that this Bumblebee solo flick was just what the doctor ordered. Let me go through and check off everything right about it:
- Dripping with '80s nostalgia... check.
- Full of heart and humor... check.
- Autobots and Decepticons running around in their G1 visages... check.
- Serviceable human characters that you grow to care about... check.
- A well told story with great action that doesn't get sloppy... check.
- Also, did I mention it is dripping with '80s nostalgia? Man... what a soundtrack.
And now for a list of things happily missing:
- Shia Labeouf, Megan Fox, Marky Mark, and the rest... check.
- Michael Bay's influence (mostly)... check.
- Racist, stupid, or poorly fleshed out Transformers... check.
- Sloooooooooo Mooooooooooo Overload... check.
And finally, the one thing I could have done without:
- John Cena. Though, his part in this is more reminiscent of a Spielberg government type than a Bay one, which is good.
In summation, this is the best Transformers outing yet. And simply because somebody was able to pull that off, I'm rating this one pretty high.
4/5