Michael Bay Strikes Again

Rating: 6/10 (26 October 2007)

I admit, the prospect of a Transformers film filled me with ecstasy. I'm too young to have seen the G1 cartoon but I grew up on G2, Beast Wars, and any other version I could get my grubby hands on. When I heard they were making a live film and that Spielberg was involved, I was over the moon. Then I found out that Spielberg was produced and the film would be directed by Michael Bay. Oh what a sad day. Bay is a master of special effects, but he can't make a stimulating and engaging film to save his life.
The plot of the film is (as I expected), thin. However, Bay does what he always does and stretches the plot as far as he can, thus making every flaw infinitely more obvious. This film could have survived with no plot at all, but instead he milks the bizarre story for way more than its worth.
Another problem: too many humans. I wanted to see a movie with robots beating the bolts off one another. I got some of that, but Bay allows the military and even average schmucks to square off with these mechanical titans. Shia LeBoeuf earns my eternal respect and admiration for pushing the part of Sam far beyond its limits, but in a good way. He's charming, funny, engaging; he must have shown up on the wrong set and decided to stay. Megan Fox is hot, but she only serves to set up more laughs from Shia. These should have been the only two noteworthy humans in the film, but no. We've got two hackers, the Secretary of Defense, a small band of soldiers, and even a government agency. In a film devoted to robots, the robots only appear on screen about 20 percent of the time. As with all Bay films, it tries to convey depth with a thin romantic subplot. Cheesy romance does not equal depth. Character development and analysis equals depth. Robots have no depth (even sentient ones), so just get to the fighting.
When Bay deigns to let us see the Transformers, he only looks at the Autobots. In the entire film we are allowed one snippet of Decepticon dialog where Megatron tells off Starscream. The rivalry between those two is hands down the richest and deepest part of the cartoon. How could you not go further with that? Axe the longing stares that Shia gives to Fox and you've freed up enough time to study the only intriguing subplot in the Transformers universe. But no, we instead look at the Autobots, who repeat over and over that humans must be protected. I appreciate it fellas, but I can't root for you if I can't see how evil the other guys are.
There are some funny lines here (notably involving Sam's parents), and the action is just what you'd expect from a Michael Bay film: loud, explosive, and awesome. However, this film would have been a modern action masterpiece if Spielberg had directed and Bay had produced. Steven would have given the explosions purpose. He would have looked at the bad guys. Bay could still put fire and bullets all over the place, but he couldn't bore us with yet another pointless romance. It's worth seeing and if you have an HD player, it was made for this film, but it's a vacant film that could have and should have been much more entertaining.