Like watching a junk pile dance to hiphop

Rating: 4/10 (30 June 2009)

Okay here's long and short of it. Transformers is a terrible movie that seemed to get a blood donation from the greatest hits of bad movies over the last twenty years. The aroma of Godzilla, Independence Day, and yes, Batman and Robin makes it presence known by way of helter skelter editing, unearned buffoonery from the characters and a perfunctory plot lost in the computer blur. Even the famous "One shall stand and one shall fall" line from Optimus Prime is robbed as Bay chooses to focus on dorktastic Shia Lebouf as he tries to evade artificial laser blasts while good 'ol Optimus fights.
This is the type of directorial choice that seem to lather the film in soda pop. I mean, the humans had Megatron locked in ice and all they could do is run around like children while this wire robot, possibly the ugliest robot I've ever seen, turns and looks at the camera and says "Melting!" in a baby giggle. Who likes this cybernetic nonsense? I cringed when I heard Optimus Prime say "My Bad." The robots didn't even have any identity to them. Their designs looked like someone detonated a car engine and put a boom box on top for a head. I couldn't identify with them at all and the constant whizzing around them done by the camera didn't help. Only Optimus Prime stood out as an anchor in the film as voice actor Peter Cullen provided gravely weight to the robot's presence. You only wish the robots were better formed and had more purpose. In fact you could say that about the whole film. The feature is like one of the robots in reality. It is a loosely connected set of gears that only on occasion transforms into a watchable film. The things that stick are the base level pleasure groans that come from both the robot wrangling and watching Megan Fox whip her hair around and gasp.
What I would like to know is how come movies with such obvious defects, the robots when fighting looked like a ball of tin foil, can make such huge numbers and have so many people willing to forgive its immaturity?
This movie seems perfected for the under 18 teenage crowd. Every adult is a simpleton and every great-grandfather is a heroic explorer. The adults, even the president, must rely on the super smarts of the sassy teenagers invited to the pentagon asked to decipher an alien language like a father asking his kids how to reboot a computer. One blonde chick in particular typified the computer hacking, code breaking fashion models that gave the adults a run for their money. The fat black kid is there as a throwaway joke, but also is a computer expert mind you. Everyone relies on a wee-wee joke in order to diss someone else, even the robots!
Except for perhaps Bernie Mac who actually is kinda fun the B actors seem to all be stereotypes including the two military guys who dive in head first with machine guns against metal aliens that can throw lightning! The president is an old sage of course. The secret ops fellas knew about transformers all along and *of course* based all our technology off of them, which serves to explain how we could find the right caliber bullet to knock them out. The cube that gives transformers life can, implausibly, turn cell phones and other goodies into robots, which was *of course* a buildup into showing all our favorite brands turn on us in fun ways.
The film is commercial through and through, loaded with references that seem to have been recommended by a mall shopping thirteen-year-old. For this, the stuck up human characters and the aforementioned hack job done to the robot's designs the movie feels like you're watching a bunch of teenagers give the play by play while King Arthur battles for the holy grail in the background.
The sad thing is that I actually read the script to the Transformers and although I was poised to dislike it being that I am an admitted fan of the cartoon I actually saw some promise in the script. I felt that the script relied heavily on the humans, but I was willing to forgive that since I knew that the movie would be star heavy and the producers aren't going to risk the capital. That aspect kind of downed me overall but I set aside my hopes for what was on page. The script read a lot like ET, except instead of the boy encountering a scared alien he is befriended by warrior bots from the stars. The script ends like the movie, with Optimus sending out a beacon to other transformers. But when I saw the film and when that final scene rolled up, Peter Cullen's voice sounded exactly as I imagined it in my mind, except for the rock music placed over it, and the ugly paint job on Optimus, and the kiss between nerdy Lebouf and Fox that made me think she must have had her brain zapped by the energon cube, and all the slo-mo's of hicks on a farm, and did I mention the rock music? It was the sugar crystals of excitement loaded onto the film that did it for me. The artificial, eye grabbing, vomit of color and bombs and electric music laid at the feet of mousy actors is what spoiled what could have been a triumphant confrontation between million year old robotic foes.