Not one for Transformers Fans...

Rating: 3/10 (27 July 2007)

Transformers tries to be the big Epic of the year. It has incredible visuals, a multi-character storyline, and a lot of spectacle amongst other things. All of this in a running time of 2hr 45min, a respectable running time for an epic.
However, all this adds up to just a big, dumb action movie in the end, miles away from the original animated series, and compared to it, this film is very disappointing. The plots and characters are all over the place, losing track of some characters and plot lines here and there, all to make sure all the spectacle scenes can take place without any real logic or reasoning behind them. You can tell that at the pre-production stage the actions scenes were carefully written and choreographed, and the rest (characters, plot, basic story, logic) were added in as an afterthought. While the CGI is okay, the character designs aren't really good at all, the Transformers looking like a mess of mechanics instead of the amazing alien characters they once were.
And this is all spread out to almost 3 hours too! Big, dumb action movies are never supposed to be that long! In the end, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg just decided to make their own film out of the franchise, they don't really care about the franchise one bit. Even so, it could have been so much better than this. It could have been a decent 90 minute Sci-fi actioner and everyone would have been happy. And if they actually took the story and it's potential seriously, this could have been the Sci-Fi epic that they clearly think it is.