Unfortunately...

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 2007)

I walked into this movie expecting to walk out excited and energized. I have never walked out of a cinema in the middle of a film, but I came dangerously close tonight. I am not writing this to bash the beloved action figures, but rather, the piece of cinematography that has demeaned their legacy.
Start with a handful of raunchy jokes. Throw in a generous amount of earsplitting bangs. A dash of vulgarity, a half-dozen instances of sheer robot violence in twenty-minute intervals, and a mass car show/ commercial... Behold! Transformers.
It really is a shame that the animation is the only element that stands out in this movie. The animators spent months on these amazing CGI characters, and for what purpose? To have them tear apart buildings and slam into one another over and over again. Immediately, the audience was captivated by the Autobots, and I was personally disappointed that their personalities did not remain constant throughout the movie. (Although, I believe this relates to the endless violence getting in the way, causing them to appear to be nothing more but mindless fighting machines.)
The film runs at roughly two and a half hours. I am willing to bet that at least an hour was sacrificed to the mindless violence, which became so frequent that it began to lose meaning and blur the storyline. I continuously overheard audience members frantically whispering "Wait...what just happened?"
Perhaps my opinion is biased because I am a fifteen-year-old girl. But my ten-year-old brother also claims that he kept waiting for something different to happen. My seventeen-year-old male friend noted that the movie almost seemed to serve as a series of commercials, and that the characters were drastically underdeveloped.
I understand that some people might enjoy movies where they can gape at cars flying and people screaming as robots run rampant through the streets. (And let's not forget the frequent flashing of a teenage girl's anatomy, nor the long shots spent admiring the over-priced eye candy of cars.) But for those of us that prefer a little more depth and meaning to our movies, you might as well step out of line to buy a ticket for Transformers.