I was bored

Rating: 4/10 (8 July 2007)

This is a great example of a film that suffered at the editor's hands. They could have cut out about 45 minutes and made this a 7 star film. The last half hour, all that ran through my head was, "C'mon already." Special effects-- Yes, there are plenty. But the transformations of the transformers, as well as the fight scenes, are all blurred and framed with jittery or unsee-able distances. By the time you see the third transform, you've seen them all. The best scenes, IMO, happened in the first 1/2 hour.
Characterization-- For the most part, tedious. You have Hollywood's versions of the typical hormone-packed high school dweeb trying to win the hot chick (played by Shia LaBeouf with no little amount of over-acting). You have his clueless, manipulable, imbecile parents who care mostly about their lawn. You have high ranking befuddled government officials (although Jon Voight does the part as much justice as can be done). You have a super-secret service contingency, filled with unlikeable, smarmy characters (headed by John Turturro who is the most mis-cast in all this movie). On the positive side, Duhamel does a good job maintaining a sense of coherency representing the US fighting soldiers. The highlight was Bernie Mac's cameo as a used-car salesman.
Plot-- Plenty of it, with good aliens vs evil aliens, and humans doing their best to help out (although I couldn't help but feel it would have gone better for the good guys if the humans just got out of the way). You can pretty much guess what's going to happen after the first 15 minutes, so you're left to just sit there and watch it unravel, through the thin dialog and in-your-face effects.
All in all, got a few smiles and chuckles, but unlike War of the Worlds, I couldn't wait for this film to finally end.