Well, it could have been worse...

Rating: 1/10 (8 July 2007)

I'm a Transformers fan from way back. That immediately puts me in an awkward position for judging the new film - no matter what, I'm going to hold it up against the almost mythic standard of the old series as seen through the eyes of an adoring child. But considering that the film was obviously meant to cash in on that glassy-eyed nostalgia, I think it's a fair trade.
So here we go. The Transformers did not, as feared, look hideously deranged or disfigured. They weren't quite the boxy and familiar-faced robots of memory, but they were mostly recognizable. Colours were toned down, which is good in that some Transformers had some truly hideous combinations, but also bad in that it meant I often had to hazard vague guesses as to who was doing what. The Decepticons were very non-entity villains, which was disappointing, and I often found myself confusedly scratching my head and wondering where Starscream's wealth of personality was.
The biggest strike against the film was probably the amount of time spent with the 'fleshlings'. It wasn't even done very coherently. Scenes would change with all the fluidity of an unexpected bus stop, or else drag on to the point where I found myself wishing an Autobot would accidentally trip and squish them all. I felt like I was being ripped off during those scenes - after all, I didn't fork out my cash to watch an awkward teenage romance, a stirring tale about the bond between American soldiers, or some dull government drama. I paid to see the giant robots! And not only see them (or the occasional glimpse of them between the indecipherable transformation scenes and the large explosions) but to hear them, too. One of the appeals of Transformers in my opinion was that it didn't star the humans. This movie has it pretty much reversed.
Still, that's not to say that the movie was all bad. A lot of it was helped along by having Optimus' original voice actor, and some things, like Bumblebee's personality, were quite accurate. The special effects and explosions were cool, but they mostly are these days, so that doesn't really count for much with me anymore. When I heard how much time they spent on getting the complicated new designs for the Autobots and Decepticons to transform, I found myself wondering why they didn't just go with something simpler that would have allowed for more screen-time with them. It's not like their efforts yielded the result of more spectacular transformations. The sequences were almost impossible to decipher, and frankly the new designs had an exposed look to them that made me think they'd all run out half-dressed.
There are a few factors that stand in the movie's favor. Seeing the Autobots in live-action was very cool, and the Decepticons were appropriately frightening in their aggressiveness and disregard for human life. I found myself drinking in the scenes that actually did contain Transformers, and while most of the jokes were cheesy, there were a few funny moments that had me genuinely amused. The film managed to evoke my worry for the well-being of its non-human stars, and there was nothing particularly offensive to old-time fans. I give it a 5/10, half points for having cool Transformers but very annoying humans.