An unflattering, debasing humiliation

Rating: 2/10 (21 March 2012)

Good things don't always come in threes. Or twos. For that matter, the first one could be pretty rancid, too. But the intended audience for the Transformers movies don't care; no matter how wretched and incomprehensible these movies are, they make money. Probably partly because they're now being released in 3D, tickets to which are more costly, but I digress.
Some people like to watch things blow up and require little else in a movie. We refer to these people as Michael Bay fans. Bay here continues his long-standing tradition of churning out a pile of exploding crap - but with robots! They make all the difference. Imagine a movie in which every scene was essentially a "we're running out of time" scenario, with every other minute filled with something either getting hit or hitting something else, and you have a Michael Bay movie. This is not news.
I can't blame Bay for making the movie or for actors like Shia Labeouf and John Turturro and Josh Duhamel appearing in them. The movies are mints, both domestically and internationally. Explosions are the true worldly language. And I can't blame those who want only this kind of movie to exist; after all, in theory their patronage allows smaller films to exist. But all of that aside, this is a trainwreck of a movie. It has a laughable plot, hysterically bad acting, and unfathomable fight scenes and seems to have been filmed by a pixie in the middle of a glue-sniffing marathon. It's inept and probably shouldn't be watched unless one is actually under the influence. Or paid.
Anyway, it seems something's been dormant on the moon lo these many years - hence why no one's conveniently been back since '72 - and it has something to do with our new friends, the Autobots. Megatron, evil bad guy supreme, is back; Optimus Prime, super good guy revives an older prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) inside the ship found on the moon, but before you know it the Autobots are fighting Megatron's Decepticons in an effort not to take over the world. Some robots return from the first and/or second movies. Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (Labeouf), the luckless loser of the first two films who somehow manages to get the girl and his own pet robot/car, is also back - with a new girl, played by the very British newcomer Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and is now looking for a job. He's constantly whining about it, too. Oh, and his new girl - whom he met while getting a medal from President Obama, no less - has a kick-ass job doing something or other with a suspicious-looking Patrick Dempsey.
In short - robots attack, other robots fight back, good robot-on-robot action, boy saves world again, gets girl, and roll credits.
What's there to like about this one? Well, Huntington-Whiteley is not terrible. She may even be better than the deposed Megan Fox. But she doesn't screw up, and that's good. She looks pretty, and the camera notices. Hm, other than that, there's some interesting fight scenes. But let me tell you about those fight scenes.
When you have two robots fighting each other, particularly amid an urban landscape, you should make sure they are discernible from each other. I know, sounds elementary and obvious, but not to Michael Bay. There are plenty of fight scenes in which each or all robot participants are gray/beige. Optimus Prime is easy to pick out - he's blue and red. Bumblebee is yellow. Most, if not all, of the Decepticons are gray and black. Even some of the Autobots are gray and black. Then the action is so whiplash inducing that it's tough to understand who's actually winning a battle.
This kind of movie requires that one suspend disbelief. This movie in particular, however, requires that you expel disbelief from your mind for an extended, indefinite leave. First, there's the robots. They're sentient and have weaponry. And yet somehow they're not bulletproof. Now, I'm not bulletproof, although I can strap on a vest that will make me so, to a degree, but the reason we humans don't wear them is that a) we're not always in peril and b) the vests are pretty heavy and not at all slimming. Why aren't these robots impervious to Earth bullets? Then there's Sam Witless. Fresh out of college, he expects - because he saved the world twice! - to land a Top Job. He's an idiot. There's literally no reason for him to be hanging around at all in this movie, because he shouldn't possess the skills to fight alongside the Autobots. He's small, he's dumb, he's weak - or so he seems. Yeah, in the fight scenes he's suddenly Superman. He runs like a stuntman. (For that matter, so does Huntington-Whiteley.) How did he come to have such power and strength? How come he's given - more than once - firearms? Has he training in operating these weapons? I am thinking no. He's like a little kid who thinks he's Indiana Jones and John McClane rolled into one. Just awful.
To top it all off, we also get the return of Sam's parents, who apparently are RVing around the world and visit Sam a week earlier than he'd thought - oh, sitcom time! As before, his mom's incredibly dumb but well meaning and his dad's a sullen jerk who obviously turns good at the end. (For half the movie he brings up how his son doesn't have a job yet.) I hope none of you saw this in the theater. If you did, I hope you didn't pay extra to see it in 3D. Why bother? This movie's an embarrassment. Amazingly, Frances McDormand is in this movie. She has a rather large role. She should burn all copies of this movie and pretend it never happened. She should return to, you know, good movies. I felt so bad for her here.