Awesome, easily best film of 2007 so far!

Rating: 9/10 (28 June 2007)

I'll start by saying when I was a kid (I'm 22 now) my life revolved around the turtles, I do remember transformers but i don't remember watching it regularly, or that much, but I do remember of it. I thought TMNT was a solid movie, but nothing special, transformers however, was just insane, the best film i have seen this year so far. This year has to be the biggest winter blockbuster season i can recall (Winter here in Australia) and so far most of the movies (other than spider-man 3) have been a huge letdown. I went into this film without any hope or expectations and just watched it to be entertained, and i was for the whole 143 minutes, there was rarely a dull moment in Transformers.
The special effects were amazing, I would be surprised if this movie doesn't win every special effects award out there. The best part of the movie, it kicks of right away and we see an attack within the first 10 minutes at a US army base in the middle of the desert and from that moment it doesn't stop, in fact there is probably one action scene too many. The spectacular final battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons is amazing. The whole thing is in pure daylight (I'm sick of movies shooting action scenes in the dark to cover costs or lack of decent CGI) so you can see every little detail of all the transformers attacking each other, tackling each other through skyscrapers and of course, all the explosions and gunfire when they shoot at each other and the humans (be amazed by Starscream flying through the buildings being chased down by the F-22's, quite possibly the best action sequence I have ever seen) This movie isn't all just awesome CGI and explosions, the cast is brilliant. The chemistry between Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox and the Autobots is amazing. They communicate with the Autobots so convincingly that even from the opening second I just forgot about the cool CGI and believed this was a real conversation (much in the same way with Luke Skywalker and Yoda). The chemistry between Sam (Shia) and Mikala (Megan) is also well done and not overdone. It doesn't take priority through the movie at all and starts off as a nervous guy trying to get the girl by purchasing a new car, and as you see from the trailer, they definitely grow from there.
The film was really separated into two halves. The first half, like most movies, was an introduction, but thats not to say any of the transformers don't come to the screen and impress until the second half, they are definitely here and there is definitely a lot of action, but the focus is more on the human characters and the US defense trying to figure out what is going on. At times this seemed to drag a bit (especially with Jon Voight as Secretary of Defense) but there is so much comical humor here (some of it quite adult, such as jokes about masturbating) to make it flow through nicely without becoming tedious, the majority of it between Sam and Bumblebee and definitely Sam's parents.
The second half, without spoiling to much, is where all the Decepticons and Autobots arrive, with a nice build up to the big final battle in the streets of LA. The only downside to this second half is that we really don't get to learn much about the Decepticons (Megatron is only really in it for the last half hour) as there is much more time to develop the Autobots and by the end you will find that you care about the fate of every Autobot, even as much as the main, human characters.
Transformers is definitely the successful blockbuster we have been waiting for this year. The CGI is amazing, the cast and acting are perfect and the action scenes are spectacular. The film will entertain anyone from all ages, not just guys born in the 80's. I'm not going to end this with a lame transformers quote, simply go and see this movie.