Overall Rating
 Awesome: 33.63%
Worth A Look: 13.16%
Just Average: 11.99%
Pretty Crappy: 11.4%
Sucks: 29.82%
12 reviews, 270 user ratings
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| Transformers (2007) |
by Matt Seaver
"Next time you destroy a franchise, Mr. Bay, make it something no one likes."
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Y’know, there are some things that are really hard to mess up. I’m pretty sure making a movie about giant robots from outer space fighting on earth with no regard to human constructions or human life is one of them. Then Michael Bay came along. Hoooooo boy…I’ll admit that I’ve been harsh on Michael Bay in the past. But he deserved it. And if Bay does anything well, it is blow stuff up, and this had plenty of opportunities for explosive goodness. So I set aside my previous caution of Bay, ready to watch him do what he does best. Then, you know what’s weird? He didn’t do it.
The film starts with a brief introduction of Transformer lore – their planet, why the left, who they are, etc. Afterward, we’re introduced to Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), a high school kid who’s basically pawning some of his explorer-grandfather’s stuff in order to hold up his end of a deal with his dad: get good grades, raise some money, and they’ll get him a car. After a poorly timed joke which was basically an excuse to get a Porche logo on the screen, The Witwickys end up at a used car dealer, where Sam picks out an old yellow Camaro… or does it pick him? Hmmm…
Shortly after getting it home, he uses it to pick up Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox), local hottie extraordinaire. Continuing antics from the dealership, the car starts doing some odd things on it’s own, like turning on the radio, locking and unlocking doors, fixing itself… all seemingly in attempts to get Sam laid. Now, why would his alien car care if Sam gets laid, considering it’s on a much more urgent mission? Yeah, I don’t know either.
Fast forward a bit, and after a few strange attacks against US troops in the deserts of the Middle East, the US government is attempting to uncover the source of a strange broadcast signal they think is linked to the attacks. Back with Sam, a whole fleet of robots-turned-cars has been revealed, all with nice new 2007 model designs! Even Sam’s Camaro updated to a newer model. How convenient. As explained by the leader of the robots, Optimus Prime (voiced again by Peter Cullen), this collection of robots, the Autobots (see, cause they’re cars!) is engaged in a war with another faction from their home planet, the Decepticons (see, cause they’re evil!), over control of the fate of their species. The key to this battle is something called the All Spark, which they suspect is hidden somewhere on Earth. Thanks to foolish intervention from humans, the leader of the Decepticons, Megatron, has been found and reactivated, and is calling his forces for an assault on the Autobots. This happens about an hour or so into the movie. THEN the robots start fighting.
I honestly never thought I could be this bored by a giant robots fighting movie. It seems easy enough, and yet… there’s really not much here. I can appreciate the dedication to the story – it’s easy to lose character and depth in a film like this – but the new personalities and the conflicts they create are tedious and poorly conceived. A sequence after the Autobots come forward features Sam trying to get one of his relative’s possessions out of his room, but naturally his parents are home and they might freak out if they saw the giant alien-car-robots. The “comedy” comes from the fact that despite Sam telling these beings of far superior intelligence to give him three minutes to find what he needs, they brazenly run into his yard, destroying it, and act like sugar-high four-year-olds with ADD. As if he needed more reminder that the giant killing machines who need something from him should be a top priority.
There’s really nothing here that was good enough to note. The directing was spastic in almost every case – the only thing I would hold up as “good” is the fights between one of the Decepticons (I don’t remember which) and the soldiers in the Middle East. In those sequences, Bay is able to string together a good “unstoppable force” story, and the fights look good as well. The fifteen minutes given to these fights are clearly the most enjoyable in the movie. All the other action – and there’s probably less than there should be – is cut too fast, shot too close, or clearly an attempt to be “exciting” that just comes off as amateurish and forced.
More than that, it’s like everyone is aware what sort of crap they’re contributing to. I hope LaBeouf comes off better in Indiana Jones, cause in this, he’s not given anything to do, and what I’ve seen of him in other stuff tells me he’s better than that. As the secretary of defense, John Voight looks as though he’s on leisurely walk; I could picture him laughing his ass off at his dailies as they come in. Megan Fox is more or less bland, but I really couldn’t tell if that was writing or acting. I also might have been distracted by the severe lack of clothes on her. Not that I’m complaining.
I’d like to point out that at one point during Transformers, I fell asleep. I had a full 8 hours of sleep the night before. I went to a 1:30 show. There’s really no way this movie, done correctly, should have been able to put me to sleep. And yet, there’s five minutes at the Hoover Dam, with John Voight running around all crazy-like, that I really don’t know what happened.To be fair, it’s possible that those five minutes held some great, enlightening plot point that made all the ridiculousness of the previous hour and a half make sense/worthwhile/not suck. But I doubt it. In the end, this is right up there with “The Island” and “Armageddon,” except moreso than either of those, I walked out of the theater feeling dirty. I think this is the last time I can stand to pay money to watch Michael Bay masturbate onto a flaming pile of cellulose and call it cinema. I’m just too poor.
link directly to this review at http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=15538&reviewer=412
originally posted: 07/20/07 15:44:30
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USA
03-Jul-2007 (PG-13)
DVD: 16-Oct-2007
UK
27-Jul-2007 (12A)
Australia
28-Jun-2007 (M)
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