Avis des critiques

Where the Bay “Transformers” movies alternated between ecstasy and dullness, “Bumblebee” is consistently middling. It’s a superhero tale of an unadorned and style-free Sundance-y earnestness, in which the cautionary and didactic hand of adults shapes and narrows the range of experiences, delivering life lessons with a spoonful of corn syrup.

At times very funny, Bumblebee is still at heart a big ol’ B-movie, but less bumbling and bombastic than its post-dated predecessors.

Michael Bay’s Transformers movies are edited so furiously that one can disregard the plots and appreciate them on the level of abstract formalism; by contrast, this prequel to the series (directed by Travis Knight) employs longer takes and more traditional montage, which allows you to really bask in how stupid the story is.

With nods to “The Thing From Another World” and even “Dr. Strangelove,” along with a Smiths-heavy, “I Love the ’80s” soundtrack, this movie is playing on a different field than previous “Transformers” pictures, which have generally bludgeoned viewers with chaos-cinema cutting and C.G.I. sound and fury.

The Transformers franchise has made bloated, histrionic pandemonium such a thing that the modest Bumblebee, for all its derivativeness, feels like a breath of fresh air.

Marcus has made a documentary that is not unlike the internet itself: maximalist and without focus. Marcus is keen on a scattershot approach, like having multiple tabs open, in making a nihilistic conclusion about how social media is a purgatory for the lonely. But his observations are facile despite the complexity the subject matter has to offer.