Will give you a headache

Rating: 6/10 (1 July 2011)

I sometimes have the pleasure of babysitting my Grandkids, and my 4 year old grandson absolutely delights in throwing his toy cars and trucks off of the second floor landing and seeing them burst apart. He then collects and plays with the pieces, sometimes breaking them even more. This movie is like that. It's like the little boys who used to play with the transformer cars when they were little got older and now they're still playing with them through the manipulations of cameras and computers.
This film does exhibit all of the usual modern computer generated effects. The locations are widely separated with nothing being too spectacular in that regard. The costuming is simple as are the props (except the computer stuff of course). The sets are, well, hard to judge because you can't really believe they're not primarily computer generated effects. I think the problem is they keep trying to do bigger and bigger special effects and at some point it almost gets boring from being so uniformly explosive and overwhelmingly unreal. I'll invent yet another new term here to cover it: "Action Movie Desensitization". One can't believe that these types of films are not solely aimed at the average 12 year old out of school for the summer. There's little else in the theaters.
The film also requires an immense degree of the ability to suspend one's disbelief to begin to watch it. The plot is as thin and makes about as much logical sense as a 1930's comic book plot, but it's there if you want to try to follow it. If you saw any of the preceding "Transformer"-type films you could likely write a better plot yourself; so just substitute your own plot in your head as the explosions unfold (NOTE to writers; a college graduate usually isn't a "teenager").
That leaves the acting. The principle characters do yeoman service for their paychecks. Several previous denizens of Transformerville return to reprise their former roles with Shia La Beouf straining his best to out-panic and out-sweat his previous filmic efforts. He does so well, along with John Turturro, Josh Duhamel, Patrick Dempsey and Alan Tudyk. The always watchable Frances McDormand comes on strong as a bad-womanesque government wienie. She was cool being bad. John Malkovich provided a great characterization as La Beouf's mildly-insane, oddball boss. He and McDormand are likely the best things in the film, BUT, there was a truly kinetic, unhinged, off-the wall performance by the increasingly popular Ken Jeong. Watch for him, he's a riot.
The odd addition is "the girl"- there's always a girl. In this case the very publicized Megan Fox from the former films was unceremoniously replaced for little understood insults to the hands that fed her. Such is life. But, Fox's bad luck provided all the excuse necessary to replace her with a younger model, literally. In this instance "the girl" is "unconventionally beautiful" 24 year-old British farm girl/model named Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Whitely's previous claim to fame, it seems, is the talent to look decent while walking around in public places in her underwear, which, of course, brought her to the attention of these film makers, so, at this point in her career I imagine her strategy has worked out rather well. She's not terrible in the film so at least she doesn't embarrass herself. However, skimpier costuming may have brought in a few dozen more teenage boys.
I couldn't help but note that every time Whitely appeared on camera, or in some cases even close-by off-camera, the script became peppered with some rather obvious and sophomoric sexual innuendos and double-entendres accompanied by some rather epic leering. The most blatant one early on coming from someone commenting on the container La Beouf's medal came in. And, please, no one spoil it for me by claiming it was unintentional. I, at least, wanted to give the writer credit for getting away with some originality.
Another thing one can't help but notice the height disparity between the two leads, La Beouf and Whitely. I checked and he lists his height in his bio as an entire quarter of an inch taller than her's states. There seems to be different people playing La Beouf as his height seems to change up and down by four inches or more throughout the film. Some of that can be explained by her footwear, but not all of it. One may wonder why I mention that? I mention it because I was so disinterested in the "action" on screen that I was looking for other things to find interest in on screen. Still, I have to give credit for any shorter guy willing to undertake scaling mount Whitely. It must have been very fun for him.
In the long run, I would have much preferred it had they cast a "real" young actress in the role instead of a model. There are a number of good ones to choose from. For example, Blake Lively (barely shorter), pixieish Ellen Page, Hilary Duff (Oooo, she can even resemble a tough girl), Kay or DaniellePanabaker (or maybe both of them, they're small), Hayden Panettiere, Mia Wasikowska (shorter than whazziz name), Aly Michalka (barely shorter), Emma Roberts (who is charmingly shorter than that Witwicky guy), Amanda Michalka (also shorter) and, my personal favorite nominee, Emma Stone (also shorter). See how easy it is? In conclusion, I will posit that the theater was uncommonly packed, the most I'd ever seen on a weekday performance, and the audience uniformly seemed to like the film a lot. So, I guess that means that they will make a lot of money which, in turn, will likely generate yet another sequel.