Transformed into a huge mess

Rating: 2/10 (11 July 2007)

I sometimes wonder if people really do hate Michael Bay. I know there are those who would like to hang him upside-down by his toes from a tree limb and beat him silly with sticks. I never knew what the big deal was. I enjoyed "The Rock"; a guilty pleasure of mine. I also enjoyed "The Island". It was when I saw "Transformers" that I understood what everyone was talking about. Only now does that line from a song in "Team America: World Police": "why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?" make sense to me. In a word, "Transformers" is a mess and it may be Bay's fault.
This film may have been an excuse to blow up and destroy as many things as possible. And they succeeded. I don't know if there was a building or a house or vehicle that wasn't crushed under the large feet of these mechanical behemoths. Probably because the camera was moving so fast and so choppy that I couldn't see what was going on. You might as well have put me in a washer for two and half hours and ask me to explain my surroundings while I was inside.
The screenplay didn't help either. Robots exchanging lines like "One will stand. One will fall", "Do you wanna piece of me?" "No, I want two" and "Oh s*it" make the film more and more unbearable. The film's main protagonist, Sam "Spike" (he's never called Spike in the film) Witwicky, asks the Transformers how they learned to speak. "From the World Wide Web" answers an Autobot. That's good, hopefully they're catching up on recent world events as well. A scene where the Autobots hide from Sam's parents around their house goes from sightly funny to irritating and the Decepticons (the bad guys) don't kill nearly enough humans as they had intended (the entire race).
The only thing that may have held this movie together is the ever-popular, and possibly best young leading-man newcomer, Shia LaBeouf. His delivery of some of his lines provide a somewhat comic relief to the growing intolerability of the pace. Although his repeated lines of "No no no no" as his situation worsens gets older and older, there is still that hint of realism since the film itself seems so fake.
If you're looking for a summer blockbuster "Transformers" has what you're looking for. You'll definitely get all the bangs, booms, and explosions for your buck. But if you're looking for something at least entertaining, why not try the theater next door and peek in on a guy named John McClane.
Review by Glenn D. Harvey