A sci fi action flick, where everyone is a comedian, that isn't very funny or thrilling.

Rating: 5/10 (31 July 2008)

Michael Bay is not the best director out there, but if there's one thing he can do, it's make a cruddy movie laden with special effects, ala Pearl Harbor. Transformers is so full of special effects my eyes practically burst from the nonstop effects. That's not a bad thing. In this case Michael Bay's big budget stupid blockbuster Transformers needed all these special effects. The problem with all his other films is how the effects consume the picture and there's no room for character development. There's character development here...so what's the problem? The characters suck! Other than Megan Fox who's on screen to bring in the teenage boys that would've seen this anyways, every character, including the Transformers, are comedians. That would be fine, but none of their comedic styles fit in what is supposed to be a popcorn munching action flick. There are many other problems to go with that, but this is what really annoyed me, though other people seemed to enjoy that.
Sam Witwicky (Shia Labeuf) has a promise from his father that if he earns good grades, he will get a new car. He does, and he gets his new car...but it's not just a car. It drives him around sometimes, and plays music that fits the situation. In fact, this must not be a car at all. Of course not, it's a Transformer autobot named Bumblebee, and Sam is needed by the Transformers because of his late grandfather's run in with the bad bot, Decepticon, and Decepticon's code is imprinted on his g'pa's glasses. Meanwhile, Sam is going around with the popular cute girl in school Mikaela (Megan Fox), and she and Sam, along with several other story lines of people, featuring Anthony Anderson as a scared computer nerd, Jon Voight as the Secretary of Defense, John Turturro as a mean agent and Josh Duhamel as a military man, all have run in's with the Transformers, good or bad.
I'll start with the negatives and move to the positives. The part of the movie where the car was playing love songs and driving itself was needed, I suppose, to move the plot along, but it reminded me of a bad rip-off of the Herbie the Love Bug movies. The humor was annoying (My biggest gripe!). Shia Labeuf has this manic, fast paced way he delivers each line, and after a while it gets very repetitive. The Transformers also do things that are supposed to be funny, like in one scene one of them drips fluid from their crotch area on someone, like they are peeing. This gets a big laugh from audiences, but for some reason only produced a dull groan in me. Anthony Anderson, known for his comedic roles, tells the female computer programmer he's with to be calm when the FBI comes in, and of course, he freaks out and starts crying...pretty obvious humor. Also, why does Optimus Prime want the cube attached to him? He doesn't think maybe they should attach it to the bad bot? I also didn't realize the Secretary of Defense just lets random people help him with problems...I certainly hope that's not the case.
Onto the positives. I liked the constantly switching story lines, because it gave the characters just enough time to be annoying before switching them. The special effects were grand and cool, and expensive, featuring streets blowing up and many other cool things you can only see in a big budget like this (150 mil). Though the humor was often stupid, at least this has a light tone so it's not dreary to watch.
Overall, this is a dumb blockbuster that put it's money where it's brains should be. But despite the problems, it was often entertaining, and I laughed a couple of times from the jokes that eventually just got to me ("Go to bed, handsome man").
My rating: ** out of ****. 140 mins. PG-13 for violence, some language and sexual humor.