Product: The Transformers - The Movie (1986)
Rating: 1.0
Can this really be the same movie I saw years ago?
In pursuit of nostalgia, I just had to watch this again recently. Bad idea; let sleeping nostalgia lie. Now instead of warm memories, I've been confronted with the harsh truth.Let's start with the most annoying part: the 80s rock. It's everywhere. Every battle scene, and mind you, about ten minutes of this movie are _not_ battle scenes. This horrific soundtrack manages to remove any bit of tension or suspense from nearly every scene. Keep in mind that most movie makers use music of this sort to show action montages and compress a larger amount of story time into a few minutes. Since there's very little exposition in the movie, the whole thing is a montage...and so the whole thing has bad music.Speaking of exposition, I'm sure you've seen movies that had too much and made it too obvious. This movie has too little. Of course that may be partly because there apparently used to be a narrator part which was cut for this release. Nonetheless, the whole thing seems to contain about 90% battles and about 10% preparing for battles in between.Orson Welles is a high point; his Unicron sounds truly menacing. Eric Idle is interesting in his role. The rest of the cast is rather undistinguished. This is not a movie that focuses on characterization, or even touches on it; if you haven't memorized the toys, you'll be lost. (As was my wife.)If you're a child of the 80s now remembering just how fantastic this movie was when it came out, and longing to see it again, take my advice: Don't. Cherish your fond memories. Because once you rent or buy this tape and watch it, all those memories are gone, and you'll never get them back.And if you just have to watch it, don't watch it with anyone who doesn't love you dearly, because you may be razzed for a looooooong time.