Long-awaited but disappointing live action Transformers adventure

Rating: 4/10 (29 July 2007)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Geeky Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) lives with his parents and has an impossible crush on a pretty girl at his school named Mikaela (Megan Fox.) But it's not all bad as his father is treating him to his first ever car- unfortunately it's a seemingly junky old Volkswagon. But unbeknownst to Sam, it's just one of the Autobots- good 'transformers', lead by Optimus Prime, that have landed on earth for a showdown with the bad 'transformers'- the decepticons, lead by the evil Megatron, for a showdown that has been brewing for centuries.
As soon as I saw those Citroen car adverts with the car that transforms into a dancing robot, I sat there and thought 'if they can do that for an advert, they could surely make a live action movie of the Transformers', most likely my favourite boyhood kids show. Sure, many people cynically shrugged it off as a cheap marketing gimmick to sell toys, but I loved watching the TV shows and collecting the clever toys that transformed into robots from fire engines, cars, tanks, and many other things. And now many years later it's finally here...
Unfortunately it's a very flawed film with more going against it than going for it. It gets better towards the end (getting a trend for Summer blockbusters???) but for the first half we have to endure a clunky script, with banal dialogue and a flimsy story that gives hardly any explanation for who's doing what to whom. If Michael Bay's going to make a habit of making these big films that stretch well over two hours (i.e. this, Bad Boys II) then he needs to at least give the script and the plot a bit more zest and vitality than this.
You have to wait a while for them, but when the Autobots do arrive on the scene, they're quite a sight to behold. Optimus Prime is very impressive, colourful and transforms marvellously. They also do Jazz, Ironhide, Bumblebee and another one. They surpassed themselves there, as it must have taken a lot of hard work just to bring Optimus to life so brilliantly. The Decepticons are less impressive, though. They're all very grey and all look rather samey. There's not much depth in the Autobots, either, but they're especially lifeless. I mean, Starscream was such a major part of the TV show, and it was always a big part of the story watching the power struggle between him and Megatron for leadership of the Decepticons. Here he's just an insignificant support character who stands there and lets Megatron berate him ("...you disappoint me as always Starscream!!!") which the TV Starscream would never have took.
The writers have put a lot of emphasis on humour, too. Not a bad thing, of course, but it does get in the way of the story a little sometimes. It's mostly to do with crude sexual inneuendo as well. The 12A certificate wasn't all down to the violence!
It could have been worse, I suppose, but for a large part of it, this just felt like a rather soulless and careless long awaited live action version of a show I used to really love. **