Entertaining enough most of the way through, but certainly not great

Rating: 6/10 (22 July 2007)

Okay, I'm pretty much of the generation to which this film is aimed. I was a kid when this show was on the air. I wasn't a huge fan myself, though. I was more of a He-Man kind of guy. I only barely remember watching Transformers. My parents were unwilling to buy me the toys because they were too expensive and they broke easily during their transformations. I really wasn't at all interested in seeing this movie, except maybe on video to see how bad it was. But I'd heard a lot of good word-of-mouth reports and my friends wanted to see it, so I caved in. A one word review: Meh. A little more: it ain't terrible, certainly a lot better than I expected. The film sustains itself with a beleaguered and just plain weird sense of humor that, if not hilarious, is undeniably amusing. In general, there's just too much going on. There are like fifteen different plot threads. The story isn't too hard to follow and mostly makes sense, but a lot of it could be cut out (for instance, the second most important piece of female eye candy, Rachael Taylor, and her hacker buddy played by Anthony Anderson). The action is quite fun most of the time, but the giant final battle has so much going on that it gets more than a little difficult to follow. I might have actually given the movie a passing grade if not for the quick and unsatisfying final battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron. Transformers is pretty close to being worthwhile, but in the end it's too big , exhausting and disappointing to really recommend.