Let's hope Michael Bay doesn't get his mitts on the rights for "M*A*S*K"

Rating: 3/10 (28 November 2009)

I waited 20 years for this!! 20 years for someone to make my beloved cartoon series of the 1980's into a motion picture that would take me back to my youth. Unfortunately, the project fell into the hands of Michael Bay, who indelibly brands it with the mark of what he thinks an action movie should be.
Unfortunately, Michael Bay's vision consists of stretching 60 minutes of plot well over 2 and a half hours, shoving two dozen characters you couldn't care less about into a movie which needed 5 or 6 max, and editing action scenes with such quick-fire erratic panache that no one in the theatre quite knows what the hell is going on.
It wouldn't matter too much if you started watching this movie half-an-hour in, as that's when the Transformers turn up. The first 30 minutes consists of something going on in the Iraq war, and an idiot trying to sell a pair of spectacles on e-bay. The same idiot is trying to get into pants of the sluttiest looking girl at school, so he buys a banger from a used car garage which turns out to be an Autobot, an alien machine able to transform from vehicles, etc. (Although it takes over a minute to transform with all the emotive facial intricacies, nice one Bay!)
Cue more autobots coming to earth to battle with the evil decepticons, a subplot involving the FBI, CIA and any other acronym associated with American Defence. John Turturro appears on-screen and makes everyone completely forget what a fantastic actor he was in the early 90's Coen Brothers films. Jon Voight aims for yet another Golden Raspberry nomination, and there's something about these glasses which point out the location of "Oh, who cares? This storyline is a new kind of bunkum"
How did Michael Bay screw this up? How did the writers screw this up?! All they had to do was take the same story from the 1986 animated picture and adapt it into something similar, but they tried their hardest to make this as different to the animated cartoons as possible. The only thing that stays the same is the names (Optimus Prime, Megatron, etc.) and the sound effects when they transform.
The only positive about Transformers is the special effects, when you can make out what the hell is happening on Michael Bay's canvas. There's too many negatives, most of which are mentioned above, but the key, repeat KEY, K-E-Y, weakest link is that you just don't care about the characters or the cybertronic war unfolding on screen. Even when Jazz gets torn in two, the action moves quickly on to another set piece that the audience has no time to react to the movie's only sense of tragedy.
And what is the big deal about Megan Fox? She's not bad looking, but she would be a whole lot prettier if she didn't spend the whole movie describing the smell of her farts.
Personally, I just hope Michael Bay doesn't get his grubby little mitts on MASK, one of my other personal favourites from the 80's...
...or Thundercats. ...or Master Of The Universe. ...or My Little Pony...