A thousand times bigger than Armaggedon

Rating: 8/10 (7 August 2009)

I am a casual Transformers fan. Not really into the toys but i love the various animated series from the original, to Beast Machines and even the more recent ones like Transformers Cybertron and Transformers Animated. I also collect the Transformers comics that started in 2005.
Skipping all the story synopsis and jumping straight into the review proper.
First off, this movie seemed to be a total re-imaging of the Transformers tale; From a rebooting of the transformers' origin to setting the main story in contemporary earth 2007.
The story and characterization is just as simplistic as in the original cartoon. The problem is, the producers decided to go with such a "real world" approach that this true-to-the-cartoon style of straight forward narrative and little character development does not mesh well.
I can live with the exceptional amount of screen time the human characters take up. Afterall, we are seeing the Transformers through their eyes, hence it is the human characters who would carry most of the story. I like this style of moving the narrative forward and of portraying the robots as fearsome, mysterious and out-of-this-world. Everything from their lines to their mannerisms help to emphasise their very "alien" nature. By not giving a full, clear body shot of any of the robots, it just adds to the sense of awe and mystery surrounding those aliens and allows for a good build up in the plot.
For the first time, we get to see the full ramifications of an alien robot war on earth. I love the script in portraying the various reactions to such a threat. From the higher end authorities, to the military down to the man on the street, all their reactions to a possible alien robot war are very realistically scripted from start to finish. There is some decent characterizations of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. The yellow autobot, especially, develops his relationship with the main character Sam really well, reminiscent of some of the more heart warming Steven Spielberg films, to the point that broke my heart when Bumblebee got captured while trying to save Sam and tortured later.
However, halfway into the movie, all that build up and characterization comes crashing down and we are back in shallow territory.
Aside from Optimus and Bumblebee, none of the other characters, human or robot, get any character development at all. Everyone from Megatron to Jazz are one dimensional and bland. The humans characters shine in a few scenes with some witty humour thrown about and some excellent acting by Shia LaBeouf and John Turturro. It is the fun script and great lines that redeems the lack of character development in the main characters. But sometimes the funny stuff get a little out of hand and ends up becoming a huge distraction especially when we're in the middle of an intense, serious scene.
I was fine with the frantic camera movements and closeups in the fight scenes. It adds to the frenzied and raw feel of the battles and actually allows one to easily imagine being IN the movie and experiencing the all out action first hand. However, one or two scenes like that is fine. What is not fine is when every battle scene utilizes this filming style. Not only is it headache inducing but it shows a lack of creative variety on the part of the director.
Aiside from the simplistic, almost juvenile story, the lack of character development and some wonky camera work, my main complain with this movie is that, compared to the TV series, the animated movie and the comics, this live action movie is just mediocre. The lack of depth here was excruciating.
The CGI graphics were top of the line, but action and special effects alone do not make a good movie. It is sad that the two core principle foundations of movies aka the story and the characters, come close to being buried under all the explosions and visual eye candy.
This is not a good movie, but I'll admit that it is an entertaining movie when one wants to allow the brain some downtime for the next 2 hours. The few good points of this movie barely hold everything together but it is a passable effort.
7.5 out of 10. Round it up to 8