Transformers An Entertaining Action Adventure With Some Flaws

Rating: 9/10 (9 May 2009)

When I first heard they were coming out with a live action Transformers movie I knew I had to go see it and I'm glad I did. It was well worth the price of admission brought to the screen by director Michael Bay who does a great job bringing this film to life. It does have some flaws but this movie was definitely better than expected and the good more than outweighed the bad. I preferred this first film over it's sequel Revenge of the Fallen which was disappointing compared to this one but hey thats me. The movie Transformers is about a young teen named Sam Witwicky (played perfectly by Shia LaBeuof) who finds himself caught in the middle of an epic war between two rival clans of alien robots, the good Autobots and the evil Decepticons after buying his first car an old beat-up Camaro (which turns out to the heroic Autobot Bumblebee). For those of you who haven't seen it yet I won't give anymore of the plot away then that. This film has dazzling special effects including the transformers themselves and just the right amount of intense action sequences that are well executed. There's also plenty of humor that balanced well between the drama, suspense, and action. Shia Labeouf is solid as the lead bringing a lot of comic relief to his role as Sam and he's believable as the character. LaBeouf does sort of sit it out in the beginning (action wise) but once the chase between the Autobots and Decepticons is on he's involved in the action a lot more. Megan Fox is all right as Sam's love interest Mikaela but she isn't given much to do except to be eye candy for the camera. Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duahmel are okay but their roles in the film seemed to get smaller as the film went on because most of the focus is on Sam but they both did a good job in their limited screen time. The movie could've done without some of the side characters played by Anthony Anderson and Rachel Taylor who are decent in the movie but that would've given more screen time to LaBeouf or any of the other characters. Jon Voight does his best as the Secretary of Defense Keller and John Turturro is very impressive as Simmons a wacky agent from Sector 7 a mysterious branch of the government with many secrets that are revealed. The rest of the supporting cast are good including the real military soldiers who are given extended appearances throughout the film. The special effects are state of the art some of the best I've seen in a long time including the transformers of course. The Autobots including Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ironhide, Ratchet, and Jazz all looked amazing especially when they transform because you felt as if they were really there. They may not show up for almost an hour into the movie except for Bumblebee but they're given at least some character development after they're introduced so you do come to care about them especially when the action kicked into high gear something the sequel lacked. The evil Decepticons looked cool but most of them weren't given enough screen time and have little to no dialogue. Megatron and Starscream aren't introduced until late into the movie before the climax in the city but they're effective as the villains. The only Decepticons to get any sort of development were Blackout, Barricade, and Frenzy but even they're MIA for large parts of the film only showing up for several extended appearances. The two characters I was a bit disappointed in were Bonercusher and Scorponok. Bonecrusher has a couple of scenes in the third act including a brief fierce fight with Optimus near the climax but he's rather easily defeated. Scorponok shows up for a few times in the beginning before disappearing for the rest of the film. The character has a 5 second cameo in the sequel near the end before being killed off that seemed pointless which made me wonder why they just didn't kill him off in this one. There's also a Decepticon tank thats credited as Devastator but it's real name is Brawl. The character didn't seem necessary like some of them except for one maybe two action/fight sequences. Devastator was later used for the sequel but unfortunately the character ended up being a disappointing villain like The Fallen. Barricade also disappears later on with no explanation and fans of the character don't expect him to make an appearance in the sequel either because he's still MIA but I guess like Scorponok, Brawl, and Bonecrusher they served their purpose despite only have a few minutes of screen time. The action packed finale between the robots and the military was intense but the shaky camera movements and the close ups made it hard to see what was actually happening at times but they worked for the film. Despite it's flaws Transformers is still an entertaining action adventure. Overall I very much enjoyed this movie and I thought it was just as good as The Bourne Ulimatum that came out that same year. It was better than Pirates 3 and Spider-man 3 which were disappointments compared to those two movies or most recently The Dark Knight which is still one my favorite films and probably won't be topped bu who knows. Even with a lengthy running time of 143 minutes Transformers is sure to please any die hard fan of the genre with plenty of action, suspense, humor, and good performances by the cast.