You tried Mr Bay, and you failed.

Rating: 6/10 (30 June 2011)

I am, without question, a huge transformers fan since childhood. The home i share with my wife is filled with original die-cast metal transformers toys made in the 80's which i display proudly in my home. I have spent large sums of money to get the items i want and countless hours learning about each transformers character and history.
In short, i am a transformers purist. This means i want any movie that depicts my childhood heroes to be true to their original characters and soul. This is a bias i must point out so that you the reader understand where i come from in writing this.
Michael Bay has come under sharp criticism for how he directed the first two films. It was widely accepted before the third was released, that the original was far superior than the second. Now it is time to explore what Michael Bay did well and not so well in the third.
WHAT IT DOES WELL. The films action sequences are superb. One of these scenes in particular is worth the price of admission alone where a number of autobots seek to protect another while driving at high speed on a freeway. More specifically, it is bumblebee's attempt to do battle with passengers on board that is an absolutely magnificent sequence that gave me similar thrills to those i experienced when i saw the car chase sequence in the second Matrix film. To give you an idea, I consider that scene in the Matrix to be one of the best car chase action sequences ever. If you enjoy action films then this movie is a must.
Michael Bay does his best to bring some maturity to the plot .There are twists that genuinely add to the drama and draw real surprise and anger (towards the characters) from the viewer - these moments alone allow the film to stand head and shoulders above the second transformers film. The brutality of battle is not censored and the very real sight of human casualties is a welcome realism that was missing in the last two films.
The film definitely has its comedic moments. John Malkovich has a welcome and underused role and the banter between Bumblebee and Witwicky is not heard often enough. There was a clear decision to give a less prominent role to Sam Witwicky's parents and i actually believe this was a mistake. Going against the grain i actually found his mother's role and edgy insanity to be funny in the first two films. Regardless, the film managed to have the audience laughing at times more so than the last 2 films.
WHERE IT FALLS DOWN The acting is cringeworthy. As i exited the theatre i overheard one woman say to her friend "would you like some cheese with that?" and her cynical question nailed it on the head. The film utilises a cliché'd romance between its main star and his sweetheart to motivate many of his actions and it does not work. Their scripted lines are stale and lack any type of edge. More importantly, the Transformers themselves always had enough on their own to sustain a plot. These are machines with souls and the original characters had failings just like humans - these imperfections made them interesting. We do not see it in these Transformers films and the insertion of a romance plus its lack of credible dialogue means we miss out on a big part of the folklore that makes this franchise great.
The film does not make a genuine effort to be true to the original transformers. To name but a few let me provide examples:

Megatron as a vehicle. To any transformers fan, this is almost unthinkable. Even more maddening is that his being a vehicle is not important to the films plot.

Perhaps the most iconic Transformers voice (after Optimus Prime) of Soundwave is not only unlike the original voice, it does not stand out from the other Decepticon voices.

This is a criticism of all the films, but do we really believe an advanced Robot race would come to planet earth and have accents as well as metallic beards as they get older?

The killing off, so quickly, of some of the very original and most important Transformer characters. We saw it in the first film with Jazz and we see it again in this film.

OVERALL Transformers 3 is an action extravaganza worth seeing for the wonderful sequence of battles and use of CGI. The acting, as with the first two is average-to-poor but this film is a genuine improvement on the second and is on-par with the first. For those with little concern for the Transformers history and mythology this is likely to satisfy but one thing is for sure, Michael Bay has failed to satisfy the hardcore fans in his attempt to bring the Transformers to modern day cinema.