Less than meets the eye

Rating: 2/10 (25 March 2010)

When I saw this, I thought it was one of awful movies where word soon spreads about how awful it is, like "Catwoman" and "Last Action Hero." But here we are a quarter of a decade later and there are still people singing the praises of this turkey. So I feel an obligation to give fair warning about just how bad it is, in the hopes that I can save some people from learning that the hard way. Simply put, this is a science fiction action comedy where the science doesn't work, the action isn't entertaining, and the comedy isn't funny. It has no value, and should be avoided (except in a "Mystery Science Theater"-type mindset).
I'm someone who can enjoy mindless action films. "Alien vs. Predator." "Batman and Robin." I'll watch that stuff over and over and like it. But this! This is the exception that proves the rule. This is the mindless action film that's so mindless it fails to be a pleasant diversion. This is a movie made by people who think that we, the movie-going public, will watch *anything*.
"Alien vs. Predator" isn't your Hal Clement, Poul Anderson-style hard science fiction. But it doesn't expect you to buy blatantly bogus science. Things like a cellular phone and a laptop computer unfolding into robots that are not only the same volume, but look exactly the same as well. Or that sound waves are something you can represent three-dimensionally, so a computer hacker can rotate the sound wave ninety degrees and read hieroglyphics off it. Or that an alien artifact can restructure machines, even ones with almost no electronic or mechanical parts, into fully functional robots with minds of their own, in the space of one second. All these things happen in "Transformers." These aren't just beyond believability. These are insults to the viewer's intelligence.
"Batman and Robin" isn't Shakespeare. But it is a sequence of scenes that progress logically from one to the other to form a coherent plot, a plot you can think about, at least briefly, without it all collapsing in on itself. It has characters who speak more or less like human beings with brains functioning at an adult level. Their lines form conversations that progress rationally from one point to the next. All this is more than can be said of the plotting and dialog in "Transformers." And the one saving grace of a mindless action film, the action, is also completely botched in "Transformers." The robot fights are by-the-numbers affairs that fail to excite (by the way, one fight destroys half a major city, and we're expected to believe the government covered it all up at the end). The problem isn't that the C.G.I. is unbelievable. That part is actually competent. The scenes are just really lame. It doesn't help that the Transformers are so over-designed and under-characterized that it's hard to keep track of who's who. When one of the Autobots dies, you don't care (and the other characters barely seem to care either). The military vs. Decepticon sequences don't fare much better, and bringing back the soldier characters from the beginning, who were pretty clearly dead, makes the desert ambush scene seem even more limp.
Even when they're not fighting, the Transformers aren't very interesting. The designer and director fail to make giant robots seem cool. I don't really understand how that's even possible. The only points this movie scores in that area are from the scene with Megatron in the ice cave. That was actually pretty cool.
The emphasis on humor succeeds only in making the viewing experience more painful. Never, ever, at any point in this movie, is *anything* funny. Not intentionally, at least. Every joke and sight gag falls flat. In a movie that seems to have hundreds of these, this is truly mind-boggling.
There you have it. The anatomy of a bad film. You can't even use the excuse that it's for kids, because it isn't. The constant references to sex and masturbation make that pretty clear. It was, however, made to sell toys, and that may be why nobody tried too hard to make it enjoyable in its own right. The toys weren't even very good, by the way. I was working in a toy store in 2007 and I know what I'm talking about. Only the largest ones actually transformed, and those were like $30.00. The rest were basically just regular action figures with the usual number of moving parts, or ones that turned from vehicles into grotesque vehicle-robot hybrids with no more in common with the transformed characters than a Centaur has with a human. The toys also didn't sell very well, at least not until the wave of new commercials for the holiday season and the prerelease promotion for "Transformers: Animated." I can't understand why people like this movie. Or why people think Megan Fox is attractive. I may never know the answers to these mysteries.