Best film of Summer 2007.

Rating: 9/10 (28 July 2007)

Despite the fact that, in my opinion, Michael Bay has directed two of the worst films of all time (that would be Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys II) I knew, from the beginning that his glossy, high-key style of film-making would be PERFECT for a live-action Transformers movie. Since The Rock in 1996, all of Bay's films have been 2-hour plus epics and that is surely the kind of treatment that a Transformers movie deserves. No 90-minute piece of crap here.
I was a fan of the animated show and toys as a kid, but viewing them now I can see how clumsy, poorly animated and just plain impractical it was. There was no reason for it to exist other than to market toys, which is fine when your five-years-old, I guess. Despite the family-friendly rating, the showing I went to had absolutely ZERO kids in the audience as it was mainly made up of twenty-somethings who had watched the show in their childhood and who would appreciate it better.
Well, where to begin about how good it is. I regard this as an 'Event' movie way more than endless, tiresome Spider-Man and Shrek sequels. The Transformers movie was anticipated for a long, long time and only in the past few years has the technology to realize the giant, alien robots on film been advanced enough. The Transformers are so photo-realistic that I'm beginning to suspect that they actually exist and are being kept secret by Sector 7. This film will SURELY win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects next year. Nothing can rival this.
The story (written by the team that wrote the Goonies II video game, would you believe) and characters are rather medium-sliced. Nothing superficial yet nothing heavy enough to slow the film down. The Transformers mythology has been altered somewhat from the TV series but only to tie-up loose ends and plot holes and to give it a more contemporary feel. If you were really cynical you say that it's just a big chase movie, but so many plot threads building at once there's enough complexity to keep most cynics quiet.
Shia LeBouf (who seems to be Hollywood's biggest young star right now) plays Sam Witwicky, a nerdy high-schooler with dreams of being a popular ladies man. His dad buys him a mysterious, banged-up yellow Camaro for getting good grades but the car seems to have a mind of it's own. Of course it does-it's Bumblebee and he's been sent to Earth to protect Sam from the Decepticon's who want an old artifact of Sam's that belonged to his great-grandfather, an explorer who discovered the long, long frozen Megatron in an underground Arctic cave.
Over the course of his adventures Sam encounters a showcase of actors including Jon Voight, Josh Duhamel, Anthony Anderson, John Turturro, Bernie Mac and, eventually Optimus Prime, who is a star in his own right. All of these actors try to run away with the film, which helps since the characters, like I said, are not densely written so their energetic performances make up for this. Though Megan Fox looks a bit older than her years and has an unlikeable 'attitude'. Did she really have a good reason to be knitting her eyebrows like that for the whole film or is she just posing for the camera?
My only other complaint is that Steve Jablonsky's dull score is basically a carbon-copy of Klaus Badelt's score for Poseidon. Both men are protégé's of Hans Zimmer I believe and their imaginations have so far proved to be rather meagre for every film they have scored. Transformers reminded me a lot of ID4. Now how cool was David Arnold's score for that? Steve Jablonsky could have really made something out of this but instead he just goes for dull synthy sounds and jarring sound effects. Yeesh!
Transformers is definitely an epic, must-see movie and is surely bursting at the seams with amazing set-pieces and breathtaking action. I impatiently await a sequel and look forward to owning it in glorious HD. The best film of the summer, no doubt.