Nobody much likes Charlie other than her nerdy neighbour Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr) who has a very big crush on her and wants to ask her out. She has a close but turbulent relationship with her scatty mum (Pamela Adlon) but can’t hide her resentment of her stepdad. She was once a champion diver but has given up the sport since the death of her father. The filmmakers sketch in Charlie’s family life in such colourful and lively fashion that we briefly forget we are watching a Transformers film at all. In Hailee Steinfeld’s Charlie, the mixed-up Californian adolescent who befriends the autobot, they have a far more likeable protagonist than the grunting, macho, gun-toting hero played by Mark Wahlberg in earlier episodes.

They fill the film with references to British music of the era too, with The Smiths and Tears for Fears to the fore. Director Travis Knight and London-born screenwriter Christina Hodson are clearly using Transformers to pay affectionate homage to Eighties brat pack teen movies and even to Disney films featuring Herbie, the Volkswagen beetle. The new film has its share of apocalyptic battle scenes involving the clunky, oversized robots but it is far more intimate in scale and tone than its predecessors. That is largely because, for once, it pays as much attention to the human protagonists as to the gigantic Hasbro toys around which the franchise is based. Cert PG, 113 minsīumblebee is a considerable upgrade on the previous films in the Transformers series. Starring: Hailee Steinfeld, Justin Theroux (voice), Angela Bassett (voice), John Cena, Peter Cullen (voice), John Ortiz, Jorge Lendeborg Jr.

The movie bumblebee