Can Special Effects be too good?

Rating: 8/10 (14 July 2007)

I grew up watching Transformers and surrounded myself with piles of the toys, so I was a little worried that Hollywood would touch and likely defile the Transformers franchise, almost as sacrosanct to my childhood as the original Star Wars trilogy.
And all in all, there was nothing in it that was a severe disappointment! Michael Bay is no master of intrigue and subtlety, but fortunately he's making a movie from a children's cartoon, so he could play his strengths: massive destruction, amazing special effects, and a jaw-dropping opening firefight that singlehandedly pays the movie ticket's price.
What disappointed me a bit, however, were the fight scenes that followed. The robots in this movie were far more complex than their cartoon counterparts, and when they got into extreme closeup rock-em sock-em action, I couldn't tell if I was seeing an arm, or a leg, or even a face..! All I saw were whirring gizmos and servomotors and clanky metal plates. To make it worse, they even added digital blurring effects to make the fights seem "faster." The opening scene worked because the camera zoomed out and let you see everything; you could fully appreciate the scope of destruction and not get entirely distracted by the 72 million polygons that made up the computer model of the transformer in action. Most of the other fight scenes were too complex, too fast, and after a while, a bit irritating.
I get it. You're supposed to be in the picture with the actors and the bystanders, appreciating the epic size of the robots and marveling at their sophistication. But it actually hampers the action with a visual, psychedelic overload of special effects.
That, and the extremely drawn-out and painful scene of the autobots all trying to hide from Sam's mommy and daddy were the only real gripes I had with the film. How much can you expect from a movie about robots who transform into little innocuous cars and trucks when they each pack enough firepower to take out several countries anyhow?