#BUMBLEBEE TRANSFORMERS ANIMATED HOW TO#
It’s got goofy-looking dinosaur robots delivering really bad one-liners, like when the lovably stupid Dinobot Grimlock (Gregg Berger) exclaims “Me, Grimlock, say you full of cesium salami!” Transformers: The Movie also features a scene where old-timer Autobot Kup (Stander) teaches youngster Hot Rod (Nelson) how to communicate with foreign-language-speaking robots, including the whimsical Junkion leader Wreck-Gar (Idle), using the “universal greeting” of “Baa weep grahna weep ninny bong.” And how about when Grimlock shouts, “Me, Grimlock, no bozo! Me king!” (pretty much any Grimlock line is hilariously strange).Īnd don’t get me started on the illogical nature of the film’s weirder set pieces and plot points, like the way that Megatron guns down Optimus Prime early on in the film…but then Prime doesn’t come back until the movie’s almost over? Or how about the completely out-of-nowhere mini-side plot involving the sadistic three-faced Quintesson (Roger C. I mean, just look at its insane voice cast: Eric Idle, Casey Kasem, Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, Stack, Lionel Stander and Welles are just the tip of this dada-looking iceberg (they also happen to be the film’s most famous performers)! Transformers: The Movie is simultaneously too much and too little movie.
#BUMBLEBEE TRANSFORMERS ANIMATED MOVIE#
But really, all the Wiki-synopsizing in the world can’t make that brief plot description any less weird or messy.īecause Transformers: The Movie is a weird and messy movie. I mean, I basically know what I mean when I refer to “The Matrix,” the life-giving whatsit that the Autobots’ square-jawed leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) asks his loyal second-in-command Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack) to protect and therefore keep away from the evil Decepticons boss Megatron (Frank Welker), the latter of whom is swiftly transformed (by Unicron) into a flashier, more powerful villain named Galvatron. Its plot is barely coherent, as many critics and fans have known for decades now. Transformers: The Movie is a molten-hot mess. OK, let me explain before you sucker-punch me through the Internet. Or one of the worst (I really, really don’t like the Bay Transformers films). I hasten to add that Transformers: The Movie is also, in many other ways, the worst possible Transformers movie. No, the best possible Transformers movie is still, in many ways, Transformers: The Movie, the theatrically released 1986 feature-length cartoon that pitted the Autobots and the Decepitcons (and the Junkions and the Dinobots) against Orson Welles’ world-devouring Unicron. So for me, Bumblebee is not the best Transformers movie, not by a long shot. So I’m totally down with the show and its flashy, silly sensationalism. I also loved checking out VHS tapes of the original Transformers cartoons from the Queens Library’s Jamaica branch when I was even younger. I’m not a big fan of Michael Bay’s Transformers films, but I was a huge fan of Transformers: Beast Wars when I was a preteen. I’d even got a step farther and say that Bumblebee doesn’t play to the established spirit or strengths of the Transformers cartoons. That is perhaps the contradiction at the heart of Bumblebee: Its restraint feels like a necessary corrective to the earlier movies’ gargantuosity, but in the end, we’re all still here for the exploding, fighting robots.” I tend to agree more with Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri, who writes that “ action sequences, when they do come, are also fairly modest - the all-out, citywide destruction porn of the previous films is mostly a thing of the past - and cleanly, effectively handled.” I particularly agree with Ebiri when he concludes that: “ a couple of points I found myself slightly missing the gonzo, go-for-broke bravado of those earlier pictures. Others, like New York Times‘ Glenn Kenny, appreciate that Bumblebee is at least better than the last five Transformers films: Kenny begins his Bumblebee review by rhetorically asking, “Can a ‘Transformers’ movie be good? It turns out the answer is yes.” Some critics, including Collider’s Scott Mantz and ScreenCrush‘s Matt Singer, think so. Is Bumblebee “the best Transformers movie ever?”
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