Sigh - Michael Bay does it again

Rating: 5/10 (30 March 2014)

The reason why I've given this review a *relatively* high score is because the effects are simply spectacular and even though I am not a fan of 3D, I still found it to be amazing in this film. That being said, you watch most movies to root for the hero (even if on some level you like the villain, you usually want the protagonist to come out ahead). Take Die Hard for example, you really like the way that Alan Rickman portrays Hans Gruber - he's a cool-headed, calculating, just-plain bad guy that you end up enjoying watching. Even so, you want John McClane to beat him at the end, you don't feel bad when Hans dies at the end of the movie. On the other hand, in this film I really wanted the villains to win, even if it was just to make Shia and one-dimensional, ex-model girlfriend character #2 shut up about Sam being "a hero" - Sam and his new love interest whine, moan, complain, and belly ache through the entire not-quite-3-hours of the movie. The only likable parts are the voice actors and Alan Tudyk as John Turturro's assistant (and a couple of Tyrese Gibson's ex-military buddies, notable Lester Speight, but I'm biased 'cause I'm a fan of Gears of War).
Rather than finally giving us characters to care about, Bay has created Asian stereotypes as tasteful as American World War II-era anti-Japanese propaganda; villains whose motives don't make sense (why is Megatron a hobo?, why did Sentinel Prime not want to colonise an uninhabited planet?, why doesn't the 20-foot tall robot squash the wafer-thin human girl when she insults him and his integrity?); protagonists who do more to make the audience wish that Earth would be destroyed; and as for Sam's parents - maybe the writers should've shipped them off to Mexico for their holiday instead of a round-the-U.S. tour. Hey, Michael Bay, in the middle of the worst recession in almost a century, don't alienate large portions of your already annoyed audience by having Sam's father spout endless lines about how unhappy he is that his son hasn't gotten a job "three months out of college". I bet he probably thought that Sam's predicament in joblessness was probably a great way to get the audience to emphathise with him, but it's not such a good idea to do it in a way that portrays the guy who is actually out there trying to get a job but has trouble doing so during a downturn in the economy as a hopeless loser. Well done, Mister Bay, well done - you've taken a franchise that people were already in two minds about in the first place and convinced even more people to not like it.