Exactly what meets the eye.

Rating: 8/10 (9 July 2007)

I was expecting an exciting science-fiction/action movie about giant robots that transform, and that is what I got.
Transformers is very entertaining movie. This movie had humor, action, great special effects. The basic story: The American military seems to be under attack by strange forces that is trying to gain information from their computers. As they struggle to find out who is behind it all, a group of giant sentient robots comes to earth to battle with their evil counterparts. The humans and the good Autobots side up to defeat the evil Decepticons. Caught up in the struggle is Sam and his friend Mikela, because Sam, unknowingly possesses the secret to the power that the Transformers are battling over.
The good:
-The special effects were incredible. It is great to see thatCGI has developed to the point where it is really difficult to tell what is an effect what is the actual background in a movie. The robot characters were awesome looking.
-The acting ranged from decent to great across the many characters. Overall, I would have to say that the acting was well done.
-The story was interesting and compelling. I was really engrossed in the movie when it was portrayed the conflict that was going on as something that was affecting 'the world', or at least got the attention of the world. This made the movie feel more 'epic-like'.
-The movie did not go into too much detail about the alien characters background and history, which I class as a good thing, since that would probably open up too many nitpicks.
The bad:
-I like seeing attractive female characters as much as the next person. However, I would like to see them as an actual character. I am tired of the female characters that are put in movies, *just* to be a male characters girlfriend.
-On that note, I am also tired of movies telling men/boys that their lives MUST revolve around women. I am tired of the message to men/boys that their lives are meaningless unless they have some (attractive) woman/girl in their life.
-I don't think that the movie made good use of the alien character's ability to "transform". Throughout the whole movie, they chose one form and stuck with it. I just thought that it would have been better to show the characters actually changing forms more often to suit a situation.
-The movie focused TOO much on the humans. I mean, the movie was about 140 minutes long and it wasn't until 50 minutes into the movie, that the "main" robot characters were introduced. Even after that, the robots were secondary characters to the human characters, which did not seem right.
-I thought that the Decepticon, Frenzy, was way too "bizarre". I think they should have toned down the 'bizarreness' of that character.
-I thought that the robot 'urinating' scene was totally inapprorpriate.
-There is a scene where the giant robots are trying to 'hide' in the backyard of the house was too goody and WAY too long.
Overall, I would have given the movie a 9/10 rating, but there was enough 'low' points to drop that to 8/10.