excellent film... not at the end

Rating: 6/10 (6 July 2007)

6/10... which equals 2/3. Fitting, considering about 2/3 of the movie was good. I'll explain. For the first two thirds of the movie, I was INTO it. The acting (while corny) was good, the gags funny, the giant robots cool-looking. I was interested in the plot, as well. The robots look amazing, and Shia Lebouf does an excellent job acting around them. Now to the bad part... after all this great acting, plot, and technology, the last third of the film devolves into one climactic battle that lasts about 20 minutes longer than it should have. Since there has been next to no fighting in the early portion of the film, it is all shunted to the end for one anti-climatic battle. With Michael Bay's "ADD editing" (thanks to whoever coined this phrase), through most of the battle you can't even tell who is fighting who amidst the chaos.
Although the robots LOOK cool, you will develop almost no attachment to them. Well... maybe Bumblebee. When one of the Autobots dies in the battle, you say "who was that, anyway?" But you don't feel attached to any of the robots. When it comes down to the final battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron, which should have been edge-of-your-seat material, it has almost no extra tension, and just feels like another smash-em'-up.
All in all, this movie is basically what I expected it to be. The action is fast, the jokes keep coming, and the CG amazing. I probably won't go see the second one, but it was a good way to finally get some closure to all those hours playing with transformers on my living room floor.