The Transformers at the Drive In

Rating: 7/10 (15 July 2007)

My wife and I saw The Transformers at the Drive-In theater this week. It's the best way to see movies, especially ones with lots of explosions and larger-than-life characters. I was very impressed by the special effects. Just when you think they have reached the pinnacle of perfection, ILM outdoes themselves. The detail on the Transformers CGI models is amazing. Watching them transform between robot and vehicle modes was worth the $6 ticket by itself (another reason to go to our drive-in is that it's $4 or $5 cheaper than the other theaters in town). Of course, it wouldn't be a Michael Bay film without explosions and this film delivers in a big way. The Deceptercons really tear things up. It's not so much the fireballs, but the way the shrapnel flies around that is really impressive though.
Also very impressive from a visual standpoint was the interaction between CGI and real objects and people. They are getting better and better at incorporating the two so that the CGI looks more real. It helped that the Transformers are made of metal which is easier to model realistically than hair or skin, but it was still amazing how well they blended the robots in.
While the stars of the show, Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, etc. looked really cool, the bots who stole the show were really the little probes. The Deceptercon who transformed into the boombox was especially funny. He and the one that turned into a cell phone remind me a bit of the droids in Star Wars which are incidental to the overall plot but yet are still very engaging to watch.
The whole movie really centered around Bumblebee and Sam though I think they could have used a few more scenes that showed the developing relationship between them. The "romance" between Sam and the car thief's daughter ole what's-her-face was even more half baked. True, the scenes of him trying to impress her with his car were funny (a little bit painful to watch for a fellow geek who has never been good with the ladies either, but still funny). I didn't get the whole "I can fix cars" bit with her though since she never actually fixes anything in the movie that I could tell. She looks at Bumblebees engine at one point and tows him when he gets damaged at another but thats about it.
Bay does a pretty good job of portraying the military in a positive light. They couldn't drag out the whole figuring out what the threat is thing much more without making the film overly long, but it still felt a bit of a stretch for them to go from having no idea what was going on to rounding up all these brilliant people (why some of them were high-schoolers is beyond me, who learns hacking in High School?) then to figuring out a bullet that will damage the robots.
It was cool that they used Hoover Dam to hide the "Ice Man" since I live near there. How they got from there to L.A. so quick was kind of weird though. Also, why would they take the All-Spark to L.A. anyway when they knew the Deceptercons were going to fight them for it? I know that way they could have more carnage for the film, but logistically it didn't make sense. They should have taken it out further into the desert instead. I also didn't get why Sam had to carry the All-Spark to the roof when one of the Transformers could have taken it and him to where ever he was supposed to go with it in the helicopter. Seemed like a bit of an unneeded risk to me. Looked like Sam almost got killed over it too.
The plot was straight out of one of the cartoons which in this case, is a good thing since it's based on one. The ending felt especially cartoonish but that was a good thing for once. They could have done without the sexual innuendos and cussing though. I couldn't tell if they were trying to make it a kids movie or an adults movie. The humor and plot were better suited to a kids show, but the inclusion of all the sex jokes made it unsuitable for kids. Go figure.
Finally, the music, while well done, was not memorable. There wasn't any real theme to it. I don't remember hearing any bits of the classic cartoon theme except a couple of times when a character mentioned the tag line "more than meets the eye". I did like how Bumblebee used clips of songs and commercials and news broadcasts to talk though. That was clever. It's been done in alien invasion movies before but it was quite effective here too.