a solid 5 out of 10

Rating: 5/10 (5 July 2007)

I should first mention that I am a hardcore old-school Transformers Generation 1 (TF G1) fan. When I was about 8 or 9, TF G1 was my favorite cartoon. Only two other cartoons since then have had any kind of impact on me, those are GI Joe, which ran about the same time period as TF, and Batman the Animated Series which ran in the early 90s after I became a big Batman movie fan. Take my review as you will...
I think that this movie was neither an incredible embarrassment to the old series, nor was it a great tribute either.
Let me start with what I thought was bad. There were many things that upset me about this movie. To begin with, I was never an advocate of a live-action TF movie at all. I felt that if another TF movie was made, it should be all CG, like Cars or Toy Story, or it should be animated just like the original series, but using fancy new animation techniques of course. I always thought that TF in a live-action setting would end up being pretty hokey, and I think I was right.
I was never too happy with the new TF movie designs. I thought they looked like insects. Optimus Prime and Jazz were the only 2 robots that really looked decent because they were similar to the originals and not so much insect-ish. Megatron and Starscream were the worst and just looked plain ridiculous.
Except Peter Cullen w/ Optimus Prime, I also thought most of the voices were lousy. In the original series, Peter Cullen also voiced Ironhide, and he was already in the movie... why couldn't he voice both characters? I must admit that Hugo Weaving made a pretty good Megatron Voice. Jazz's voice sounded silly and bumblebee speaking through/as the radio was annoying and made me angry.
The dialogue was so cheesy! Why did they have to cheese it up so much? Prime steps on something and says "My bad!" STUPID! The odd-looking girl didn't recognize Sam through 10 years of grade school? What the heck was that all about? Well anyways, I could go on and on about designs, dialogue, voices, etc... but I digress.
The good parts of the movie? The action, battle scenes, and storyline were pretty good and in my opinion, balanced out all the bad things from this movie and pulled it up to an average score from me. The plot was good, simple, standard Transformers fare and its something you could see in the old animated show. The action and battles were pretty outstanding. Even though Michael Bay knows absolutely nothing about developing characters, he sure knows how to blow stuff up!
Although I went into that movie expecting it to be awful, it wasn't THAT bad. It also wasn't THAT good either. I suggest you set your expectations low, and you probably won't dislike it so much. Of course unless all you want out of movies is thin plots and lots of explosions and special effects... if thats you, this movie should be right up your alley. Well thats all I have to say about that.