The Transformers franchise still has a few flaws, but Dark of the Moon is a decent addition to the franchise and an enjoyable summer blockbuster overall.

Rating: 6/10 (29 June 2011)

I enjoyed Transformers in 2007 and rated it on here a 8/10. I was really looking forward to Transformers 2 and despite the negative reviews I went to see it and was appalled at how awful it was with the most cringe-worthy dialogue and acting. The jokes were immature, offensive and became extremely dull and repetitive with two "jip and hive" Autobots who were really annoying. This made the film over-bloated with an in-exhaustible length of two and a half hours. It had shameful ethnic stereotyping of a couple of the human cameo characters and the women namely Megan Fox was just on show for eye candy (which would be no problem had she been able to act and had some interesting character traits.) The biggest problems I had though was the camera and editing, with when it came to the action the camera was switching so fast and edited so frenetically it was impossible to comprehend what was happening to the humans or robots making the action (which would have been the movies biggest asset) a bore too.
Anyway my friend against all resistance from me managed to persuade me to see Dark of the Moon and in 3D and I have to say I was extremely sceptical and groaned inwardly when I saw the length was two and a half hours. Two others things I wanted Bay to improve on was cutting down on the jokes and making them less offensive and the camera/editing of the action sequences.
I went in and sat down. I will say that the first ten minutes before Sam Witwicky (La Beouf) and Carly, Sam's new girlfriend (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) turned up in her apartment was fantastic. Bay cleverly inter-cuts with real life and archived footage the achievement of Man's landing on the Moon in 1969. It was very interesting to watch. Unfortunately after that for the next forty five-fifty minutes Bay introduces nothing but pointless scenes, which should have been left on the cutting floor of cliché and boring jokes and even though he said he would tone down on it, he really hasn't as there are two small Autobots who try to act cool, but really they're just annoying. What's more the jokes are still really insulting with a few homophobic and racist jokes, particularly of one Asian character Jerry Wang who is so obviously stereotyped with the way he acts. We are also meant to laugh because he dies. Seriously any Asian's or guys that are gay who watch this and find it offensive have every right to feel that way. As ethnic/social groups they are consistently marginalised in most mainstream Hollywood movies as it does not fit into the ideal Conservative American Ideology. The thing is with Bay though is he makes it so obvious and uses it for cheap laughs, which is just cruel he might as well have it tattooed on his forehead for all the world to see. At least other directors that do stereotype don't make it as offensive and achieve it more subtly. Anyway where Bay has toned down the comedy well is the appearance of Sam's annoying and dim-witted parents Ron and Judy who are in it for less than ten minutes, though they could have been cut out all together.
The plot is simple but too overextended for it's length with the narrative being incoherent, a bad script with more cringe dialogue and acting bad from some but from Whitely being the worst. She is a model and looks fantastic but has no acting ability or interesting traits as a character and she knows it. Her and Shia have no romantic chemistry either.
So what has Bay done well at? John Malkovich turns in a great cameo as Sam's boss (his comedy sequences are actually funny). Shia is solid in his lead acting and Hugo Weaving was great at voicing Megatron, but the best was the voice-over acting of bot Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy) who was really convincing as a villain and cleverly inserted the phrase from Spock in Star Trek, which you will know when you hear it. The CGI of all the robots was stunning, in fact the best CGI since Avatar with the 3D being impressive though mainly during the action sequences. It was terrifically photographed with some stunning scenery. The soundtrack music was quite good too.
However where Bay has come the furthest is he ticked at least one of my three things I wanted change was the camera-work/editing during the action, it was much better! The camera flowed much better and was edited much less frenetically. It was superbly done and looked very professional. In fact there were scenes where there was slow-motion of the action, so I could see the action even more, actually happening and it was much more enjoyable as a result. Bay has wisely restrained himself in that respect and deserves credit.
It's true Dark of the Moon does have it's flaws and Bay hasn't redeemed himself from all his mistakes in number two, but he has tried and the camera-work out of my three was my biggest gripe, which he changed. Also even after the 45 mins of bad jokes,the next 30 was good with one great action sequence on the motorway and the last hour of non-stop action, which I highly enjoyed and was the best part of the film. This dosen't deserve all the low ratings of one and twos, which it undoubtedly will receive as it's better than the second. I did get bored some times but it was tolerable, even at 2hr 30mins. It is far from the worst film I have seen this year and a decent summer popcorn flick that mostly entertained me. Believe me it was a pleasant surprise and if you see this with a more open mind, you might enjoy it too, though that is not guaranteed. I though am glad I saw it.