Not without its faults, but still very good

Rating: 7/10 (3 August 2007)

I was a big fan of Transformers as a kid and I can't begin to explain how excited I was when I heard that they were going to make it into a full on live action movie.
Transformers tells the story of the Autobots (the good robots) and the Deceptacons (the bad robots). The deceptacons are out to get a device known as the Allspark, a device that has the power to destroy human life on earth. The Autobots are there to make sure that doesn't happen. The leader of the Autobots Optimus Prime forms an alliance with Sam Witwicky, a teenager who has the key to finding the Allspark...blah blah blah.
First of all, the praises: the special FX in this movie are seamless. You could almost believe that they created these robots from scratch just for this film. The film is also quite respectful to the original cartoon. Optimus is still a truck and is voiced by the one and only Peter Cullen, Starscream is still a jet, but some have been changed, and the changes are very welcome. The humour has also been given special treatment, with a fair share of laugh-out-loud moments.
Now the complaints: although this is an action film and people don't normally care about the story for a film such as this, that still doesn't make it right that it was pretty much ignored. There are some blatant plot holes in this film and the script could have been further fine tuned and tested before they decided to say "oh what the hell, let's just get on with the action!". Also, Michael Bay's directing is...difficult to follow. Yes, the action comes in thick and fast, and there is no shortage of explosions and metal crunching, but, my God, can't you just pull the camera back a bit and let us see what's going on? The editing is too fast and often you are left gritting your teeth because he simply won't show you what's happening in the whole picture! So, they have green-lit two sequels. This film was a very decent stab at it. It was a good way of seeing the Transformers in life action mode and there are moments when you want to jump out of your seat in amazement. I just hope that in the new ones they fine tune the script a little and please let us see what's going on more!