Movie Review: Transformers

Right off the bat, I’ll admit that I’m a “Transfan.” For you un-initiated people, that means that I’m a Transformers nerd. I grew up on the cartoons like New Englanders grow up on Red Sox games. I pined over the toys in catalogs and at stores. I cried the first dozen or so times I watched Optimus Prime die in the original Transformers movie. I’ve even watched nearly every Transformers cartoon since. I begrudgingly watched Beast Wars, and grew to love it. I sat through the oddly pseudo religious anomaly called Beast Machines. I endured “Robots In Disguise” even though there was just as much screen time for people as there was for Transformers. I even watched Transformers:Armada and gave Transformers:Energon a shot in spite of the oddly stiff computer animated Cybertronians. (If they could make an entirely CGI Beast Wars/Beast Machines, why was it so hard to make someones mouth move properly in ‘Energon?’) All this doesn’t even include the comics.

Having said that, I was willing to accept that Michael Bay’s Transformers was going to be a departure from what I had grown accustomed to. I wasn’t expecting complicated plots or Oscar worthy performances (or directing). I just walked into the theater expecting to see a movie about a race of alien robots reliving the classic good versus evil battle. What I got instead was a mish mash of Men In Black, Independence Day, Malcom in the Middle, and Pearl Harbor. Not even the good parts, either.

The film is rife with bad humor. Almost every character that isn’t white has a racial stereotype connected to it. Shia Lebouf’s character Sam is connected to too many scenes (one of which centers around masturbation) in which his parents remind us that being a teenager is incredibly uncomfortable as if no one knew. John Turturro’s character reminds us that government agents are not only inept, but practically retarded. Not even the Transformers are safe from bad humor, as a Chihuahua “lubricates” Ironhide’s foot, and Bumblebee later “lubricates” Turturro’s character. There’s also a Decepticon CD Player that apparently watched a lot of Robin Williams on Fast Forward. Because that’s what it acted like.

If you think the humor is bad (and I do) you should see the action sequences, or the lack thereof. When you do get to see a fight, it’s usually in slow-motion. Not Matrix-esque bullet time, mind you. It’s good old fashioned Michael Bay “I’m running and shooting at the same time” action. That’s if you get to see it, though. Often in the film, you miss the best action because the camera follows Sam instead of the giant battling robots. It happens early on as Bumblebee and Barricade go at it, and instead we see Sam fighting Frenzy and being saved by his girlfriend. It is most noticeable, though, at the climactic final battles as instead of watching the Transformers duke it out, we see the Military ducking for cover, or instead of watching Optimus Prime and Megatron have at it we follow Sam into a hole in the ground. I’m serious. Be rest assured that you’ll know exactly when the battles over, though. Every time a battle ends, someone stands up dramatically to take a peek at the devastation. That’s just in case you forgot Michael Bay was directing.

What truly amazes me about this film is not that the bad action or the bad humor. It’s that in a movie about 30 foot transforming robots at war most of the time we see the robots they’re standing around like a bunch of high school kids in between class. In plain sight. In some scenes they talk loudly and fall over in suburbia and no one seems to notice. They’re also made to look like idiots who are less intelligent than the “Primitive” humans they’re supposedly protecting. Especially when it’s the human’s that save the day, and not the Autobots. It’s WCW booking in a major motion picture!

Save your money and see another movie. If you’re thinking about spending your hard earned $8 on an action flick, save it for “Live Free & Die Hard.” If you want to spend your cash on a comedy, try “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.” If you want something to take the kids to, try “Harry Potter.” Even if you’re against the “black magic” of Potter, you won’t have to explain to your 7 year old what Masturbation is. Because if you take them to Transformers, you’ll be explaining that and a lot more