More noisy nonsense

Rating: 4/10 (23 August 2016)

DARK OF THE MOON is the third and final instalment of the TRANSFORMERS trilogy and a film that's pretty much indistinguishable from the previous two entries in the series. It's another overlong, noisy, and completely over the top offering from Michael Bay, who as a director understands nothing of nuance, subtlety, or how to properly direct his actors.
The plot is vapid and routine. Once again the Autobots and the Decepticons are back on Earth and battling it out. The best thing about the film is the calibre of the special effects; the CGI is endless and exemplary, and shiny chrome and plate metal have never looked so good. Kudos to the special effects guys for creating such a realistic-looking race of giant robots and featuring them for so much of the screen time.
I admit that I got a basic enjoyment from this film from watching the endless destruction of both cities and robots. There's something of an appealing kaiju quality to it. Unfortunately, the rest of the elements of the film are rubbish. Shia LaBeouf is really awful in these films, not even making an effort, although the worst actor in it is Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley, who doesn't even try to act; she just stands around and looks dumbly on. Jon Turturro is here, doing a bad impersonation of Al Pacino, while Frances McDormand comes in to pick up her pay cheque. The worst thing about Ehren Kruger's dumb-as-nails script is his insistence on going for the lowest common denominator throughout, i.e. aiming it at the teenage male crowd, thus including endless stupid comedy relief (those mini-Transformers) and generally spoon-feeding to viewers.