the.[ED]ition

I blame Spider-Man 3.

Seriously, I do. That “movie” started the train of suck that has somehow hit almost every action flick so far this summer. I didn’t even bother going to see Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End because, well, that franchise died with the second one and I don’t even think it’s even necessary to have reviews to tell us that the second Fantastic Four movie sucks too. Therefore, I honestly didn’t have high hopes for Transformers. The second I heard Michael Bay was directing the movie and Optimus Prime has an actual mouth, I pretty much lost hope.

Seriously, Michael Bay has never made a movie that wasn’t, at best, questionable. I’ll give him The Rock since Sean Connery can save anything, even a movie with Nicolas Cage holding a gun and maybe the first Bad Boys but since then…The Island? Pearl Harbor? Armageddon? Each one is exactly the same. Cue the slow motion silhouettes and the quasi-heroic dialogue with quasi-heroic music in the background while the camera spins around and around. Let’s throw in some action that happens reallyreallyreallyfast with shaky cameras at ground level while the heroes pull off ridiculously unbelievable and often entirely unnecessary acrobatics.

If you searched for the realistic in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Michael Bay and the caption “Anything but this guy” under it. Trey Parker and Matt Stone asked in a song on Team America: World Police why on earth Michael Bay can keep on making movies. Why? Because he’s the shiny object for our current ADD-afflicted world. People just can’t get enough of this guy regardless of how much his movies blow.

But I digress. Regardless of how much Michael Bay sucks, his style is actually quite…friendly to the Transformers movie since, well, nothing actually needs to be realistic about a movie involving 30-foot robots that can change into cars, tanks, planes and helicopters. The action is fast-paced and nearly non-stop save for a few scenes near the beginning with Sam (played by Shia LeBeouf) and Mikaela (the smokin’ hot Megan Fox…more on that later). If you want to see giant robots pummel each other with an insane amount of detail, this is the movie for you.

The story is, well, standard action movie fare, really and I’m not even going to go into details because it’s not necessary. You’ll figure out what’s going on within minutes, especially if you’re a fan of the franchise. Honestly, I’m not a huge Transformers nerd even though I watched it as a kid. There were some characters I didn’t remember or recognize so I can’t comment on the authenticity compared to the source material. However, it appears everyone’s there and relatively the same. Peter Cullen, who voiced Optimus Prime in the original 1986 movie and television series reprises his role in the movie.

Now, let’s talk about Megan Fox. There’s no other way to say this, really. Megan Fox is hot. Like the kind of hot that could evaporate oceans…seriously. She looks amazing from start to finish here and she knows her way around cars. Her performance isn’t bad here either, of course and everyone else in the movie does a decent enough job although acting is usually just good enough to get by in most action flicks. To be honest, if they weren’t up to standard, they weren’t bad enough to notice in this movie but also not good enough to notice.

Other than Fox and the special ops soldiers (played by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson, who provide the eye candy for the ladies while the guys stare at Fox and Rachael Taylor), everyone from Lebeouf to the Autobots and Bernie Mac and Anthony Anderson in relatively small roles is there to provide comic relief. A certain scene involving, well, hiding makes you wonder how the Autobots can possibly be so incredibly stupid for such an advanced race. The joke dialogue and sight gags are enjoyable as long as you don’t think about it too much.

…which is also how you should approach the dialogue overall. Honestly, I’ve never heard so many cheesy lines delivered with over-serious voices in my life. I wanted to punch myself in the face every time someone shot off another cliche hero line, one after another. Of course, fans of the original movie and cartoons will credit this as authenticity to the cheese of the ’80s but it does get excessive.

Also excessive is the product placement. All the Autobots are all General Motors vehicles, which is only slightly offensive since at least they’re all different brands of GMs. Barricade, one of the Decepticons, is a modified Ford Mustang. Otherwise, Panasonic also appears…twice, but that’s not totally horrible other than the obvious closeups but the whole scene where Lebeouf trips and accidentally “creates” a couple of alien robots seems like it was tailor made for Mountain Dew, Microsoft and Cadillac. In a movie that almost guaranteed to make money, why insult us with such blatant in-movie advertising.

Overall, it’s tough to say. If you’re a big Transformers fan, then you’ll love this. If not and big explosions aren’t your thing, then you’ll probably want to watch something else. As a movie, between the line cheese, General Motors commercials and…Michael Bay, it’s not going to win any awards but if you grew up watching cheesy cartoons about cars that turn into giant robots, fighting to even cheesier music (god…anyone else remember The Touch?) then it really doesn’t get much better.

Verdict: 5.5 out of 10 (add 2.0 if you’re a big Transformers fan, another 0.5 if you grew up in the ’80s)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.