More than Meets the Eye

Rating: 6/10 (5 July 2007)

Transformers 6 out of 10 There was a time in my life where a certain toy was my most prized possession. That toy was Optimus Prime. Aside from G.I. Joe's, Transformer's were my favorite. I would set for hours playing puppeteer to one after another autobot/decepticon battle. So, much like the hundreds of thousands of TM fan boys out there I waited to see the live action version with much anticipation. The only thing I wasn't sure about is Mr. Michael Bay being involved. After unleashing such warmed over mediocrity over the past ten years (Armageddon, Bad Boys II, etc), I had my reservations about how he would bring TM to the big screen, but surprisingly he got a lot right. Not everything though.
The film starts out with an Optimius Prime voice-over setting up the struggle between good and evil then takes us straight into the life of Sam (Shia LeBeouf). Sam is just your average teen, trying to buy a new car to impress the girl. But, when his father buys him a vintage yellow Camaro, Sam doesn't realize that it is a robot in disguise. The Camaro ends up being the autobot, Bumblebee. (Bumblebee was originally a VW bug as a toy, but in an effort to totally be a whore to general motors and to make Billy Woodring enjoy this movie he was turned into the newest model Camaro) There's a great sequence when Bumblebee drives away in the middle of the night and Sam gives chase, thinking his car is being stolen, and then discovers his Camaro turning into a thirty foot tall robot. From there all the pieces start to fall perfectly in place. The rest of the Autobots are introduced. Jazz (voiced by none other than Eddie Winslow from Family Matters), Ratchet, Ironhide, and yesOptimus Prime! Optimus explains the battle between good and evil again to Sam and reveals to him that the key to saving earth lies in Sam's great grandfather's eye glasses that Sam is currently trying to pawn on eBay. (Yeah I knowjust go with it.) At this point Bay has done almost everything right. The acting is pretty much what you expect from a summer blockbuster, except for LeBeouf. Shia LeBeouf is subtly becoming the next big thing in Hollywood and I think he will have a bright future as the leading everyman. He does the best that he can with the script and turns out a great lead performance I could have done without Tyrese and Josh Duhamel's characters. I mean come on , do we really need to see Duhamel jumping off a speeding motorcycle and then sliding on his back on the street fifty feet all while double fisting machine guns at a Decepticon? Come on Bay, not everything has to be that over the top! The FX and the overall look of the film are great. The Transformers look really awesome and the CGI blend in with the real background almost flawlessly. The main problem I had with TM is the running time. There is no reason the running time needed to be two hours and thirty five minutes. My nostalgia started to sputter out around one hour and forty five minutes and I think they could have saved some face by cutting the last thirty minutes of CGI battles. Bringing back Peter Cullen to reprise the voice of Optimus was a nice touch, but I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to hear "You got the touch" at the closing credits. That song was from the 1986 animated feature and the song was later hilariously recreated by Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly in Boogie Nights. I guess that's the difference between Michael Bay and me. I would have chosen "You got the touch" for the closing, Michael chose Linkin Park. This is definitely an improvement on Bay's recent work though. I'm not saying its Armageddon bad and I'm not saying its Bad Boys good. I think it is somewhere right in between.
So, my suggestion to you is that if you are a Transformer fan boy like me, find the biggest screen in your town and go see it with 500 other people. The robot battles will keep you entertained for two hours. If you're not a fan and you don't know even know what a decepticon is, then I hear A Mighty Heart is pretty good.
JB