One long butt kicking commercial!

Rating: 7/10 (2 July 2007)

First of all let me just say that I am not one of those crazy Transformers fan boys like the Elias character from Kevin Smiths Clerks 2 movie. I am familiar with the Transformers back from my Saturday morning cartoon phase when I was just a lad, but thats about as far as my previous knowledge of them goes. I arrived at this movie expecting a typical Michael Bay summer blockbuster effects driven adventure. I knew it wasn't going to be Oscar worthy material, keeping that in mind, I found myself being rather entertained, and not totally disappointed.
While the movie does hold a typical big budget summer flick running time, there is usually enough going on to hold your attention. Shi Labeouf carries his role well as one of the main human characters, I found myself enjoying everything he did more and more as the film went on. His co-star Megan Fox, while very very easy on the eyes, did not totally come across as well for most of the film. Near the beginning when you first meet her she seemed to me very wooden and stiff, but later farther into the film she seemed to get better and more into the role. The real stars of the film however are the Transformers themselves. The autobots, led by Optimus Prime, and the Decepticons led by Megatron duke it out and flex their metal muscle throughout the film. I also thought the cars were cool to, if not really excessive with the product placement. I think that with the exception of the classic camero, all the other cars they transformed into always had the logo front and center aimed at the camera.
All and all I suppose that there are worse ways to spend two hours of your life. I think some of Michael Bays more adult rated R movies like Bad Boys 2 are better but I did not leave the theater to disappointed. Take it for what it is folks, a big budget summer popcorn flick, it has some bad, groan inducing moments, but it also had some wow that was cool, and hey that was pretty funny moments to! Don't be to critical and just try to have fun, maybe play a game, like count the number of product placements or something!