Try forgetting about yourselves for a while - you might enjoy it!

Rating: 9/10 (12 July 2000)

There's not much I need to say, really, except that all the people who have written to the effect that only stupid people could possibly like this movie are themselves a few braincells short of a six-pack. They're apparently so far up themselves that they seem entirely to have missed the point that this film knows exactly what it's doing from start to finish. It knows it's corny, it knows it's crazily larger than life, it knows it's out to push all those staple movie buttons, and so it does it all with a terrific sense of humour and, more importantly, on a scale that simply beggars belief but which - crucially - works fantastically. Contrary to what some people say, director Michael Bay does a simply tremendous job of making the whole, massive juggernaut of a movie bolt along at a terrific pace, and even more remarkably, manages to engage your emotions even while you're laughing your head off at all the hokum. Other people complain about the characters, but I struggle to recall a movie that crammed so many memorable - if, naturally, larger than life - people into a single movie. Basically this film is pure cinema. Sure, it's not an Ingmar Bergman film, but it never wants to be one. And if, as anyone with half a brain cell should see, you judge it in terms of what it does want to be, you will see that it succeeds quite magnificently. Sorry to get a bit personal with this review, but as a person who enjoys movies of all sorts, I just couldn't stand by and let arrogant fools diss a top movie for no other reason than it doesn't stay true to the 'laws of science' (sheesh, get a life guys!) and doesn't want to fit into only the small category of 'coolness' they're pseudo intellectuality permits them to admit to enjoying. I gave this movie a 9, by the way.