More Shia LeBeouf than should have met the eye!

Rating: 5/10 (13 July 2007)

Michael Bay's live-action version of the popular 1980s cartoon series in 'The Transformers' is quite a spectacle in visual effects and action set pieces. However, unlike the 1986 animated film, Bay's version feels vastly different to the original concept that made the cartoon so loved. While certain characters- such as Optimus Prime and Bumblebee- look close to their original design and had understandable changes, the rest of them seem a mess of CGI and metallic bits that confuses and assaults the eye.
I'll say it, Megatron sucked! Not only was he hardly in the movie, which made him less of a worthy adversary to Optimus Prime, he didn't even look remotely close to the original character. Hugo Weaving's voice over is nowhere near as good as Frank Welker's throaty sinister tone (though I understand that Welker's voice had aged too much for the role). Pretty much all the Decepticons sucked with the exception of the new addition in Blackout. The most annoying Decepticon had to be the bumbling and elusive Frenzy, who kept talking in gibberish throughout the whole movie. Some of the audience members may wonder what happened to Scorponok- who briefly appears in the desert but never comes back. At times, I did find this film a little confusing in it's action set pieces as to what was actually going on. For instance, I didn't know which Autobot Megatron was fighting on the rooftop, until Optimus Prime mentions his name later.
However, the main problem with this movie is the human element to it, and some silly obvious references to the cartoon. You may as well call this movie "The Annoying Kid from Disturbia fights Alien Robots" cause Shia LeBeouf- who plays Sam Witwicky- is very pivotal to this film, so much so, that the film seems more about him than the actual Transformers. Sometimes, he's okay, but other times, his dialogue is just silly and unbelievable. The beginning of the film, Shia is doing the usual teen things, getting a cool car whilst trying to lose his awkwardness around really hot girls such as Megan Fox. Of course, with a little help from his really cool vehicle that happens to be an Autobot named Bumblebee- Shia manages to get to know Megan Fox and even manages to tell her that she is "more than meets the eye". And if you didn't get that was referencing the original series, he repeats it very slowly for you.
Add in a few army guys, a few sound geeks led by a really bad actress, Jon Voight, John Turturro in an over-the-top comedic secret agent shtick, and not to forget Shia LeBeouf's overly embarrassing clueless parents; then this movie becomes seriously bogged down by human characters. Understandable that we need the human element, but when it takes an hour and a half to introduce Optimus Prime's main arch-rival (as well as other cooler Decepticons), then Transformers seems to lose its robotic edge in establishing itself as the supposedly kick-ass movie of the year. Like Spidey 3, TMNT, Ghost Rider, this film gets bogged down in stupidity and unnecessary comedy.
As for Michael Bay's direction, it was nicely stylised, and with his usual slick flare in showing shot's of cool vehicles. The final battle is quite impressive, but the overall plot seems by the numbers, and there was far too much winking to the audience within the dialogue. I also noticed that Bay even uses the same annoying circular camera trick for an action scene with Frenzy (where the camera does a 360 horizontally around the room) that was already tiresome in Bad Boys II. Michael Bay just honestly lacks the magic that Spielberg puts into his films! All in all, the film does have really good VFX, but I still think the Sandman sequence in 'Spider-man 3' is the best I've seen this year! However, I wouldn't be surprised if 'Transformers' gets a visual f/x nod at the Oscars next year. If that's worth anything, you may as well see it. Right now, I feel like the odyssey of 2007 blockbusters to be extremely disappointing in some regard, and while I believe Bay had a hard task, he seems to have forgotten that the Decepticons had a lot of depth too as characters. With the exception of Bumblebee and Optimus Prime, it seems the rest of the Transformers took a backdrop to their human counterparts in the depth department.
**Â½ out of *****!