Entertaining but flat

Rating: 8/10 (26 June 2007)

To me the talented Michael Bay is a director who should dose his action scenes more. I actually got headaches from watching all the exploding things in Armageddon. Those scenes were very well done, but there's also something like overkill. Less action and more character development and his pictures will be more in balance. Enter Transformers. The trailers looked great, the first screenings were very well received and with Steven Spielberg as a producer this project just couldn't get wrong. It doesn't actually, but to say that Transformers is a flawless movie...
I guess the best thing about Transformers is that Bay succeeded in making the audience believe that a toy franchise can actually be the basis of a believable and entertaining movie. The first hour of Transformers is great fun. The movie starts with a bang (the first Decepticon destroys an entire base in Qatar) and introduces the world of the Autobots through the eyes of the character of Shia LeBeauf. He plays a very likable geek who wants to buy a car in order to be more popular at school. That car of course turns out to be Bumblebee. LeBeauf is great. Shia plays his character with a lot of humour and he carries the movie without any problems. The second part of the movie is about the war between the Autobots and Decepticons. Here the usual Bay mistake enters. Although the action scenes and special effects are great, a lot of it should have been deleted. Once you've seen a truck turn into a Transformer, you've seen it all. You know the good guys will win, so why not speed it all up?
In my opinion science fiction only works when it has a certain degree of logic and realism. In the first part a military captain (Josh Duhamel) who just turned into a father almost gets killed by a Decepticon. The whole world think his legion is dead. But once he's in the normal world again he doesn't call his wife that he's alive and kicking. In the last part of the movie the good guys lure the bad guys to the big city so they have more ways to hide an important item. That's dramatically a good choice, because there are a lot of potential human victims there. But is it realistic? When you know how much damage the Decepticons can do, a big city is the last place you wanna go. The role of Megan Fox is both a curse and a blessing to the story. First of all, she's so incredibly hot that sometimes you wish that the Transformers weren't there to spoil your view. Wow, she rocks! On the other side she starts out as this unreachable babe (like Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man). But despite all that's happening to them the love story between Shia and Megan remains hard to believe. But then again, maybe I'm just jealous, hahaha!
I would like to end this review with one remark. The Transformers toys aim at children between five and twelve years I guess. I know Hasbro has been hoping that the movie would be 9+ (or something along those lines). If you look at all the Aliens-like violence in the movie you can imagine that 9 year old kids (despite the official rating) might visit the movie if they're accompanied by a father. But why spoil this opportunity by putting the scene in in which they talk about masturbation? If you saw the movie you know what I mean. The scene was very funny, though. Transformers is a great action movie and will without any doubt be a huge success and the first installment of a movie series. The second movie will be the movie of truth. Okay, we know now that Transformers can disguise themselves and transform from a car into a robot. Now show us things they can do that can reach us at a dramatic level!
7,5 out of 10