Jean-Paul’s rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: Easily the best Transformers movie. Not a compliment.

I saw “Bumblebee” because nothing else was showing and Michael Bay was in no way associated with the creation of the movie except in the amorphous “producer” bucket which also contained Stephen Spielberg. I lie. I want to never see a Michael Bay movie ever again, but I know I will go back no matter how much he hurts me. I can’t quit you Michael!

Here’s what you get in “Bumblebee”: bad acting, John Cena having some decent John Cena moments, lots of schlocky scenes, a generic but ok enough story, action you can actually follow. The latter is huge if you’ve ever seen another Transformers movie where you are treated to scene after scene of Baysian nightmares as indistinguishable movements of metal morph and clash and boom. Unlike those other films, “Bumblebee” seems to put at least some thought into not trying to make the audience motion sick.

The worst part is the acting is just atrocious. I mean there wasn’t much material to work with, but it was sometimes painful watching what was happening on screen. This includes John Cena’s role though he was entertaining at points when he cranked the Cena to eleven. The only props I’ll give is to Hailee Steinfeld as Charlie. It’s not easy when the most charismatic actor you have to work with is a CGIed car that morphs into a robot and she did a good job of making you believe she was talking to the robot instead of the thin air of real life.

I read somewhere that people were comparing “Bumblebee” to “E.T.”. I can only assume that all those people were secretly Stephen Spielberg because aside from the whole “young person accidentally finds alien and tries to hide him from the government who wants to do tests on him and young person finds friendship and acceptance from alien” thing going on, there’s nothing similar at all. Oh. That was all “E.T.” was about. This movie is exactly like “E.T.”. “E.T.” wasn’t that good either.

There was a bit of oversexualization of Hailee Steinfeld throughout the movie as is fairly typical for the franchise and Steinfeld is an adult, I guess, but she’s supposed to be playing a high schooler which always makes it creepy. Good news is someone actually had the sense to make it much less creepy by having her wear bike shorts underneath her short shorts so the questionably chosen camera angles were more modestly revealing than they otherwise would be. Or maybe that’s just a style kids are wearing these days? Regardless, either hurray for the adult in the room or hurray for teen fashion sense!

If you’ve liked previous Transformers movies you should really get your head checked, you might have a tumor or something, but you will also probably like “Bumblebee”. Nostalgic Transformers fans will look wistfully upon the initial Cybertron fight as they see a handful of fairly loyal representations of some classic toys from back in the day. Other than that, best to stay away from this film.