2 1/2 hours of Power Rangers

Rating: 5/10 (9 July 2007)

You have to admit there is some truth in the title of my review. TRANSFORMERS was definitely one of the films I looked forward to seeing during the summer. The trailers looked awesome, and I couldn't wait to see the movie. I walked out with mixed feelings, although the feeling of disappointment outweighed my more positive feelings. But time has passed, and I'm slowly appreciating the movie a bit more.
The first fifteen minutes are very promising, providing humor and great character development. Shia LaBeouf is in the lead role, and he is fantastic! His character has a great, lovable personality you just can't resist. The scene where he buys the car, however, left me with a strange feeling because it was so fast-paced and different.
Next, we're trekking through the desert with a unit of soldiers when they are greeted by a transformer. These action sequences are spectacular. However, they serve almost no relevance to the overall plot of the movie, which by the way, is a very interesting plot.
While being your average "unqualified person must stop beasts from taking over universe and get girl" plot, it has its own unique way of presenting itself, providing great action sequences and awesome special effects. While the plot is obviously unrealistic (because it's a sci-fi film), it comes with some unrealistic moments, such as a 5 foot Transformer making its way through a sea of people without getting noticed.
This is one of several problems with the film: not being realistic. People's reactions to the Transformers are not the way a normal human would react. The humor is just plain awful (Sam's Happy Time was just outright nasty), and the movie seems to take itself seriously during some scenes and then strips away its dignity in others. These problems are what make the movie strange and sometimes hard to watch.
This goes for about an hour, right up until Sector Seven enters. The rest of the movie after the introduction of S7 is fine. Most of it is action, and of course the action is some of the most entertaining in movie history.
One other problem I could actually feel was the film trying to be dramatic. Car chase scenes were spoiled for me because of random guitar riffs beginning to crunch, slow motion effects were painful to watch, and Optimus Prime talked as if he just came from the recent Star Wars films. However, his voice was done to perfection.
I would also like to tip my hat to the others who did the voices of the Transformers; although some of the lines were painful to hear simply because of how strange they were ("this looks like a good place to kick it!"), all the voices were magnificent.
Transformers had the potential to be a great film, but it only turned out OK. Right now it's at an 8.2, but that will probably drop as more people view it. There is some truth about the title of my review; whenever it doesn't take itself seriously it feels like Power Rangers. That's the main problem; the film doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be serious or not, and that makes it a bit difficult to watch, because you want to take it seriously, but you just can't at certain moments. Overall, I give this movie a 5.5- an OK film with some positive notes and some negative ones.