Robots - Thumbs Up; People - Thumbs Down

Rating: 6/10 (10 October 2008)

I went into this film not knowing much "Transformers," only that they were some toy robots you could re-assemble into other things, like trucks. When they were popular in the '80s, I was not a young kid who cared, being past that age-wise, so I had no preconceived notions about this story.
What I found, on the positive end, was a goofy story but a great visual and audio movie, one that I heartily recommend you see on Blu-Ray high-definition, if you have the equipment. You will be blown away by the sharpness of the picture, one of the best BDs I've seen so far.
The other highlight to me was the special-effects. These "transformers," aliens who could change shape from cars and trucks into giant robots, was jaw-dropping at times. True, the action was overdone in the last hour, but that's normal for a modern-day action film. Most of it was fun to watch. I preferred the second half of this film, anyway.
While it was fun to watch, this movie was not fun to hear, meaning the dialogue, which was extremely annoying, mainly in the first half of the film. Maybe if I was a lot younger I could have enjoyed Shia LeBeouf's wisecracking lead character, "Sam Witwicky," but he was too smug, too obnoxious for me. So were the other "good-guy" characters in this story, who were all young, edgy and loud stereotypes. You know, grubby-looking 17-20 years old people who all know more about computers and science than anyone else older than them. It's very offensive to anyone over 25 watching this film.
Speaking of stereotypes, the worst was the portrayal of every adult in this movie except one (Jon Voight's Defense Secretary character, who was fine). Everyone else in any position of authority was made to look stupid and totally idiotic. Filmmakers have been doing this since the '60s. There is no one Liberals despise more than a military figure or someone in the government (if they are Conservative.) Voight must have insisted his role was not going to be like the others. If you doubt this, just check out John Turturro's "Agent Simmons." It's ludicrous.
The worst - the most insulting of all people in this film - was Sam's mother. In one of her scenes, this woman's dialog might be the most disgustingly-unfunny segments I've ever seen on film and total insult to any viewer with any intelligence. It was at that point, I almost junked the DVD and returned it to the store. However, I hung with it and the last 50 minutes was enjoyable and free of most of that stupidity.
I was reminded of one thing: director/writer Michael Bay has a resume of overwrought, intelligence-insulting films like this one. He did "The Island," "Bad Boys I and II," "Pearl Harbor" (when the Japanese were made to look like the good guys), "The Rock," etc. Thus, I will be very wary of watching one of his films again or anything written by Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who wrote the screenplay. Then again, I have to admit the action scenes in here were pretty awesome and I really did enjoy the last hour or so. I guess you take the good with the bad.