What a shameful waste of money

Rating: 4/10 (6 March 2010)

This was a remarkable film, in that it reached truly unparalleled levels of awfulness.
Where to start? Is it the very poor dialogue, the lack of character building, the terrible plot that had more holes than I can possibly list here, or the fact that they somehow managed to string it out for nearly 2.5 hours? I'll pick on one aspect, to illustrate how poor this movie is in every regard: the complete lack of research that went into the film. Somehow our lead characters, who lacked any kind of depth whatsoever and are therefore completely interchangeable, so I won't bother using their character names, travelled through Egypt extensively, somehow managing to drive from the Pyramids of Giza (in Egypt) to Petra (in Jordan) and back again in an afternoon; then when back at the Pyramids of Giza, they popped to Karnak in the south of Egypt for five minutes before returning to the Pyramids again a frame later.
Egypt,according to Michael Bay, is about ten kilometres wide.
As for the pyramids themselves, how you are able to see Khafre's pyramid in the background, when the lead character is supposed to be on Khafre's pyramid at the time, is completely beyond me.
How Michael Bay thought he could get away with using Egypt as a setting for at least a third of the film, without bothering to actually go there and see what it looked like, is completely beyond me. But get away with it he did, apparently.
**** UPDATE: Since writing this, I have discovered that not only did Michael Bay film in Egypt, but the Director of the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities was instrumental in making it possible. Very few American movies get to film on set in Egypt. I can only hope that this shows what is really important to Zahi Hawass, given the eventual treatment of the Pyramids in this film: In Egypt, the almighty dollar rules supreme. ****
This is a kid's movie, made for older men simply because of the gratuitous flaunting of the female lead's body throughout.
In summary: if you still own Transformers toys, you'll love this. If you have anything better to do for 2.5 hours of your life, you should avoid this.