At least that means this time they have written a story-line. "Bumblebee" has a secondary angle, as it is a film about friendship and trust. Since the film actually has a side-story of interest, it's miles above the previous instalments, which don't really have any other agenda than to blow shit up and sell tickets. And as you actually care for the characters, you actually care what happens to them. For the first Transformers-film ever.
A perfect example is the scene in which Steinfeld meets Bumblebee. Travis Knight is simply better than Bay at things that don't explode, and uses the necessary time and angles to make the scenes between explosions worth watching.
The humour is better as well, particularly the scene where Bumblebee discovers what music he hates. Though I wish he hated something worse.
Having a director that isn't so driven towards shit, makes for a huge improvement on the music as well. Particularly the introduction of Steinfeld to the tunes of "Bigmouth strikes again" is pleasing, as well as Oingo Boingo of course. The soundtrack is 80's only (until some horrid piece during the credits, for some reason), and they didn't stop there. They even found room for some olden, goldies among the actors. Remember Fred Dryer? Didn't think so.
Speaking of actors, John Cena isn't exactly Oscar-material and proves as much here. Though the casting is hardly totally off. As a bad-ass soldier, he kind of fits the bill, regardless of limitations. Unfortunately his part is rather large, making the film suffer greatly. Another poor choice is the casting as Dylan O'Brien as the voice of Bumblebee, making the robot sound like a nerdy teen before his voice change. Thankfully, Bumblebee is mute for most of this film. A better piece of casting is aforementioned Hailee Steinfeld as the main character. Without the foot-in-mouth-direction of Bay, she is actually allowed to be charming and use some facial expressions, at which she is much better than Shia.
Knight doesn't really know how to balance his different parts though, and at times this film actually lacks a bit of action, until there is a bit too long a sequence towards the end. But hey! He doesn't rotate the camera, so this time you actually get to see the robots fight.
The biggest problem is that there isn't a shred of original thought anywhere in the film. The protagonist is of course an outcast that doesn't care much to fit in, but has a super-special skill (2 actually). And naturally, her dad is dead, thus (supposedly) making us care more. Well, people less cynical than me at least. And you can pretty much guess everything that's going to happen.
So this is infinitely better than any of the putrid instalments before it. Still, you can't help to think that the Marketing department has been involved too heavily in some of the decisions here, making it a bit more stupid than it had to be.
6/10
