Movie for boys of all ages, candy for both the eyes and the hormones

Rating: 6/10 (30 July 2007)

I had no knowledge of the transformers before this beyond a few vague memories of toy cars that turn into robots. I hadn't even realised there were good robots and bad robots until I saw this.
The movie starts off with an attack on a military base by an unknown robot thing that resembles a scorpion. The military are unsure whether anyone survived, which a few soldiers did. There is also an attack on the computer system, with the firewalls all being hacked within seconds. The military bring in a group of hackers to try to work out where a strange sound heard at the time originated from. Meanwhile Sam Witwicky has to write about an ancestor at school and tells the story of his grandfather, an explorer who lived the last years rambling about a monster in the ice and Sam is trying to flog a lot of his old belongings on EBay to buy a car. Sam's Dad takes him to buy a second hand car and he ends up with a beaten up yellow car he soon discovers can turn into a robot.
To cut a long story short, one hacker works out where the signal comes from and Sam's car is joined by a group of Transformers who explain that their world was destroyed and new Transformers are made with "The Cube". Sam's grandfather found a frozen Megatron who was determined to create a new race of Transformers, the Decepticons. The small group, led by optimus Prime, are called Autobots and they have to stop Megatron from being released and finding the cube. Of course the military have Megatron in a big freezer, just waiting for the hacker Decepticons to defrost and let loose when they find out who Sam and where they can find their master.
First, this movie looks great. The action scenes are spectacular with great effects and a great combination of people trying to destroy the Decepticons and the Autbots having their own battle with them. The plot, for me, was a bit bizarre but if you don't question it it's easy enough to follow. I don't know how much of this followed the original legend.
As for the actors, it's funny how all the guys look geeky except the hunky soldier types and the girls, even the hacker girl, all look like they belong in a magazine. Hmmm, definitely a boy's movie this, even without all the fancy cars and robots.
The movie was far funnier than I was expecting, although from what I know not everyone is a fan of the humour in it. I liked that the Autobots all had their own personality and that their leader was almost like a school teacher looking after a disruptive class for some of the time. The voice actors all did very well, with Optimus Prime especially sounding austere and frustrated at the correct times.
All in all a good fun movie, but I won't be buying it. Definitely one for the kids with the big robots and the teenage boys with lots of hormone candy of both the female and machine varieties. I'd have no problems taking kids to see this although there is some mild swearing, but the nature of most of the action scenes are fine for kids, there's no blood, just bits of metal.