Giant robots standing around looking impressive does not count as action.

Rating: 3/10 (1 October 2007)

Boredom isn't an argument, it's a complaint. Because of this fact, I try to avoid using the term "boring" to describe any movie, no matter how boring it is, instead searching for some better way of criticizing it. However, I think there's no other real way to express it this time: Transformers is a very boring movie. Here's why.
I went to the movie theatre to see giant robots fighting each other! Yeah, I got some of that... maybe about 25 minutes of it all told in a movie that was two hours and twenty minutes long! The rest of this behemoth was filled with scene after inconsequential scene of not much happening except the following three types of dialog:
1) The characters trying to be characters. I.e., Shia LeBeouf: "I want a car! This is my car! My car is an alien robot! Car car car! Worry about my car! What should I do about my car? I just wanted a car!" Jon Voight: "What is this, Chinese? Korean? Iraqi? Afghanistani? What? How should we deal with this? What is it? Why do I know nothing of this?" Optimus Prime: "We're here to fight for the human race, which has a choice, and that choice is a freedom, and there must be sacrifice, and, and, well, we're not much better race either!" Jon Turturro: "I can tell I'm a completely useless character, so I'm just gonna be a jerk until I'm supposed to be a friend, or something! It's all because I have power because I have a badge!"
2) Self reflexive junk: "This is 100 times better than Armageddon!" (Hey Mike? None of us remember that POS movie. You could at least have said "The Rock" or, if you were more daring, a recently released movie from a different studio, perhaps.)
3) Ill-fitted and awkwardly random social awareness: "I'm willing to bet my ridiculous government salary that..." "I'm sure if anything was going on, the government would tell us, right? Right? Hint hint hint!"
All of these things would have been at least a little fun if there was any amount of intelligence or wit behind it, but most of these moments are simply shoved into a giant, glurgy sentiment that goes on literally for hours with only the occasional transformation or rifle burst to keep interest. The apotheosis of this approach has its form in the scene in Sam Wicwicky's bedroom, where a relatively simple scene of him trying to find his grandfather's glasses turns into a twenty-minute bumbling session involving stupid parents talking about masturbation and earthquakes, stupid robots destroying a yard for no reason but to be funny, and way too much of Shia LeBeouf yelling at both of them. By the time that scene alone is over, Transformers has already lost a huge amount of momentum. It doesn't really pick up after that, and it's still a good half an hour before the final battle scene takes place.
Michael Bay seems to have lost something, somewhere. Not that he was ever the greatest director in the first place, but at least one could depend on him for some action. This movie just doesn't have it. It has no suspense. Whenever things finally do get going, Bay seems to prefer to cut to a character worrying over something else, which ruins the moment. Hell, half the time the movie goes back and forth between night and day as if the average earth day is about three hours in length! The directing is lazy, the dialog is poor, and even the good actors have a difficult time truly making their characters seem zany or even interesting.
The really bad part is how most of the action is resolved. The little spy robot thing that follows everyone around? Accidentally knocks its own head off. The defeat of Megatron? Accidentally activating the Cube... Oh, so that's all that had to be done? Great, let's go home now. And how does that have anything to do with "sacrifice"? And why do we need a grandiose speech by Optimus Prime about how, like, humanity has hope or some crap like that?
Forget it. This would have been a perfectly reasonable 45 minute movie, maybe stretched out to an hour fifteen for good measure. Instead it was two hours of painfully dull and unimportant crap with only just enough action to even claim that a giant robot war was all it was about. It's a pretty bad sign when I'm more interested in cleaning my nails than paying attention to whatever other character happens to be introduced for little purpose than to add yet another flat-trying-to-be-funny voice into the mix.
I saw this movie in second-run because I didn't want to risk nine bucks on it. Even after that, I STILL want my $1.25 back. I've already run into some trouble when talking about this movie to some of my friends. "You're over-thinking it, it's supposed to be fun!" Yeah, that's my point: I was disappointed in a movie about giant robots fighting each other. How can a movie about that not be fun? Bay somehow managed
--PolarisDiB