The Transformers trilogy only gets worse...

Rating: 1/10 (29 July 2011)

After apologising for the underwhelming second Transformers release Michael Bay, the director of all three films, promised that Dark of the Moon would get the trilogy back on it's feet. It seems that he has not only failed to learn from his mistakes but has actually managed to produce a film worse than the critically slaughtered Revenge of the Fallen.
The film is pretty much split in two in terms of plot. The first half follows the main character Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) through his failed job hunting days, in which he spends a lot of his time moaning about his lack of independence and sizing up the competition that is his girlfriend's boss. We don't see much of the Transformers themselves during this part of the film, besides an Autobot mission in Ukraine and an annoying assassin robot killing annoying people. The focus here is on Sam's relationship with Carly, that's right Megan Fox's character is gone. She is played by first time acting model (alarm bells should be ringing) Rosie Huntington Whitely who plays the posh, well educated British type. Why does Hollywood insist all British people are like that? We're introduced (reintroduced in some cases) to several other over the top characters in this part of the film including Sam's Boss (John Malkovich) and Agent Simmons why is John Turturro still in these films!?
The second part of the film is pretty much one giant battle in Chicago. Megatron; leader of the Decepticons (the Transformer villains) has come up with a plan to wake up a long lost army, invade earth and enslave the human race in order to rebuild Cybertron; the transformer's home world. The Autobots, the US military and Sam Witwicky go in to try and fight them off. There's a huge robot snake thing that destroys a skyscraper, soldiers skydive into the city from battle helicopters and the transformers Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and co tear apart Decepticons. This should be exciting and wake the audience up after a boring first hour and a half, but it is done in such a way that it has you muttering to yourself please end now please end now. Bay seems to have the need to shoot EVERYTHING in slow motion, including Huntington-Whiteley's ass. The dialogue delivered by the Transformers and soldiers whilst they're fighting is ridiculously cringe worthy. There are several moments where the film has the opportunity to do the unexpected; to kill off a main character! They come ridiculously close to dying each time but, surprise surprise, are saved by the perfect timing of something falling or a hero who you thought was miles away turning up. This happens far too many times
Michael Bay doesn't seem to understand that what matters in a film is a good story and scenes that are effectively put together, not how much stuff you can blow up in slow motion.