BUMBLEBEE

Hailee Steinfeld     John Cena     Jason Drucker     

Voices of:  Dylan O’Brien     Justin Theroux     Angela Bassett

            Bumblebee is a lovable transformer that may convince you that robots have emotions after all.  This is not so far-fetched; a podcast of “This American Life” verifies that robots can come up with adages that the human mind can perceive as wise (Podcast #663, “How I Read it”).  Of course it’s a bit of a stretch to take that to emotional sensitivities, but…

            A prequel to the Transformermovies that started on TV in 1986 and appeared in movie theaters every few years thereafter (2007, 2009, 2011, 2014, 2017), Bumblebee(O’Brien) has been sent to earth by Optimus Prime, Chief of the Autobots, to set up operations to defeat the Decepticons, which are out to destroy earth.  

            Meanwhile on earth, Charlie Watson (Steinfeld), a teenage girl grieving over the death of her father is sustaining her memory of him by continuing to work on cars, their favorite activity together.  She has become sullen and self-preoccupied, but cheekily asks her mother for a car for her upcoming birthday.  Her mother doesn’t take this seriously, but Charlie has been looking in her friend Hank’s junkyard and spies a yellow VW Beetle.   She cagily bargains for it, and Hank lets her have it, giving his employee a wink that says, “if she thinks she can make that work…” good luck to her.

            Charlie doesn’t realize it, but this little car is one in which Bumblebee is hiding from the Decepticons.  When he first transforms himself from a car into the giant robot Bumblebee in her garage, she’s a bit intimidated, but her fascination and curiosity makes her pause, reflect, then want to make friends with him.  

            Most of the action thereafter will be battles with the formidable Decepticons Dropkick (Theroux) and Shatter (Bassett), mixed in with the not-very-helpful U.S. Sector 7 interventions led by Agent Burns (Cena).  

            Hailee Steinfeld as Charlie continues her fine record of performances in True Grit and The Edge of Seventeen, showing a spunky, searching teenager trying to sort out her life and understand the world she lives in.  As her newfound friend/neighbor Memo, Lendeborg lights up the screen with his initially smitten character who gamely goes along with whatever comes up, eventually respecting the strange girl next door.  Playing Charlie’s younger brother, Jason Drucker, captures your attention with his realistic portrayal of a kid who looks up to his older sister, but has ambivalent feelings about her.  

            I think this is a worthy addition to the Transformers franchise for those who like this kind of fantasy.  And the addition of a mechanically minded girl who becomes a hero especially pleases me.

A worthy addition to the Transformers franchise.

Grade:  B                                 By Donna R. Copeland

PITCH PERFECT 2

Anna Kendrick   Rebel Wilson   Hailee Steinfeld   Brittany Snow   Elizabeth Banks

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Pitch Perfect 2 is “pitch perfect”, but the quality of the music and the catchy tunes make it entertaining and fun.  Certainly, the hundreds of spirited young girls in the audience tonight were highly approving judging by their frequent laughter and grooving with the songs.  It is a little too sweet and girly in places for my taste—almost embarrassingly so—but that didn’t keep me from enjoying it. 

      If you saw the first Pitch Perfect, this will be familiar to you in that an all-female a cappella singing group keeps winning prizes for their performances despite all the doubts of others.  The message is that if you have talent—despite public mistakes, have faith in yourself enough to flaunt it.  This “2” is a bit like The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is to the first one—more of the same, but still entertaining.

      The writers (Kay Cannon, screenplay; Mickey Rapkin, novel) and Director Elizabeth Banks make sincere attempts to address current issues and controversies about race, gender, and sexual orientation by making jokes about them, but they are more often misses than hits.  Their most successful ones are spoken by Flo (Chrissie Fit), a Latina who humorously points out tragedies and close calls in her life that were so much worse than the situations other characters are dithering about at the time.   When someone says, “Is anybody scared?”, her reply with perfect timing is, “Not me; I’ve already lived longer than I ever expected.”  Where the joke falls flat is a time when someone starts to say, “I was…” and the other person says, “Oh, I thought you were going to say you were gay.”

That brings me to another off-putting aspect of the script, which is that some characters (John, played by John Michael Higgins; and Keegan-Michael Key, Beca’s boss) are overly snarky and cruel, rather than funny and clever as I assume they were intended to be.  Both snarky and cruel can be funny, but not in this script.  John makes some shockingly sexist comments about the Bellas that are so stereotypical—but since they are still adhered to by some in our society, are no longer funny.  Beca’s boss humiliates an intern continuously, which is supposed to be funny, I guess, but isn’t.

      I also thought the initial “disaster” for which the Bellas are going to be severely chastised is over the top.  It’s a little creepy to play up the event—such as it is—as a sexual no-no and then linking it to the historical Marilyn Monroe birthday song for President Kennedy.  Poor taste, I think.

     To me, the best part of this production is listening to the a cappella groups sing, along with Anna Kendrick’s singing and performing.  Another of the funny parts of the script is her trying to be snarky, which never comes off as biting; it just sounds dorky because Beca has so little hostility.  I also greatly enjoyed the Snoop Dogg segments; Beca’s mashing up his song without his apparently noticing was priceless.

Many will find this pitch perfect.

Grade:  C+                                                By Donna R. Copeland