"Left cheek! Left cheek! Left cheek!!"

Rating: 4/10 (7 July 2007)

This following review has no product placement whatsoeverthe movie being reviewed has done enough of that on its own. Transformers is a great idea turned sour because of pitiful writing, bad directing, sloppy acting, weak editing, and a slew of perky little flaws that some people will catch but others will totally miss. With such a heavy budget, one would think that they could hire better writers, right? And Mr. Bay, why on earth do you still attempt to add emotion to your mind-numbingly loud movies? The special effects were indeed amazing and the CGI work was nearly flawless, but that gets tampered by all the lower-budget work involved. This movie could have been cut by nearly 40 minutes, the pacing was slow, it was just all wrong. To fail this movie would be exaggerating considering the intensive effort into making the robots (and the effects were executed perfectly) but do not expect anything worthy of being among the summer popcorn champs past and present.
In a mindless action movie, a plot isn't totally necessary but something has to be established in order to give the viewer a reason to continue watching despite all the explosions and body parts flying. Transformers doesn't have a weak plot (Powerful cube-like object embedded in the Earth and two armies of alien robotic things fighting to obtain it) but the dialogue is easily the weakest portion of the film. It must have been so hard for the actors and actresses to not laugh at some of the insanely cheese things they have to say. Bay hasn't been very lucky with the whole dialogue thing (Pearl Harbor, The Island) but its reached a new low here. What also mars this movie is the endless amount of clichés sprinkled all over the place. The pretty-female-with-jerk cliché has been done way, way, way too many timesplease stop now. Oh, and let's not forget the barrage of plot holes too (How can ANYONE outrun a Transformer?!)
Acting was rather wooden as well. Despite decent performances from Jon Voight, Rachael Taylor, and John Turturro (hey, its not his fault he had so many bad lines) the acting was pretty weak. The voice acting amongst the Transformers was a mixed bag, and Shia LaBaouf comes off as pretty annoying sometimes. The lead female, Megan Fox, is amazingly pretty but that was about it. Speaking of wooden, let's discuss the musical score, which seems to borrow from all other popcorn flicks, including previous Bay works.
The worst part of Transformers is Michael Bay himself. Despite the screenplay, he could still craft a clever action movie; it has been done before (The Rock, Bad Boys anyone?). Instead, we get the hypersensitive camera work, the spinning-cam that Bay has suddenly fallen in love with, too many long shots of people looking at something, and then too many close-ups during the fights, resulting in a mess of a battle. Sometimes, its extremely difficult to see who is fighting what and who is the hero and who is the villain. Like Fantastic Four: Silver Surfer, there were little action quips, but no major action sequences until the very end; which even then consists of a lot of miniature battles jumbled up into one final showdown.
In order to get to the action we've all been craving, we have to put up with pointless and useless character development and unnecessary scenes that made the movie at least 40 minutes longer. Michael Bay is no Spielberg; he cannot portray emotion for the life in him. His pacing is really fast when conflict is spewing, but when this isn't happening the gears shift into negative third gear. Spielberg should have been working on this, since summer popcorn blockbusters is his specialty (Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones trilogy, Minority Report, Jaws, War of the Worlds). Bay should have just made this a frenzied action film, instead of a complete film full of all sorts of genres, from comedy to action to romance.
Something not to gripe about however are the incredible special effects. The robots look absolutely fantastic, and their movements flow beautifully. Despite the camera moving too much and not finding the right range, the robots going at it is one of the best-looking CGI shots in the history of cinema, and we've been very blessed with incredible special effects this summer with At World's End. The audience was applauding every single time that a robot was first revealedunfortunately they don't get much screen time. As a matter of fact, some just ultimately disappear from the film altogether, while some have extended periods of absence. Nonetheless, when you do see them, your jaw will drop in amazement.
Bottom Line: Wonderful special effects destroyed by practically all other aspects of the film. Whether it's the bad acting, bad writing, bad directing, bad pacing, or just overall all-around bad clichéd cheese, Transformers is a very good idea turned sour because it fell into the wrong hands. Bay should stay away from all attempts of adding emotion to film and just blow things up and create carnage. However, he even screwed that up by giving the camera a bad case of Parkinson's. Transformers may entertain the hardcore fans but it will take a while to see the action that's been advertised heavily in the media everywhere. Watch it once, see it for the booms and kapows and blams, and then forget about it like most of Bay's other works. Wait, what else has Bay directed?