Film Review: Transformers (2007) D-

Date Viewed: 7/11/07
Venue: DGA

Transformers is a movie for the mentally challenged. Based on a toy line, directed by Michael Bay, and apparently written by unsophisticated chimpanzees, it s a recipe for lameness that comes out of the oven all fresh and warm in it's stupidity.

Now, I must come clean. I loved the Transformers as a kid. The toys, the cartoon series, even the much-maligned animated feature. That was when I was about eight years old and also thought The Goonies was one of the best movies ever made. Needless to say (well, maybe not needless, I hear there's apparently a large population of unwashed thirty-something 'transfans' venturing forth from their parents' basements these days), I no longer wish I was a Goonie, and I realize the Transformers cartoon was a poorly plotted and ill-constructed show.

So it was with zero expectations that I ventured forth to see the 2007 version, hoping Bay could deliver something cool. What I got was an overly convoluted tale of the Transformers arriving on Earth in search of something called the Allspark, a giant cube that can revitalize their machine homeworld of Cybertron. Apparently, only the awkward and unwitting teen Sam Witwicky (Shia Lebeouf) has the secret to the cube's location. The good-guy Autobots, led by Optimus Prime (voice by Peter Cullen, the same dude who iconically voiced the cartoon), seek out Sam to protect him (and all humanity, for that matter) before the evil Decpticons can find him. Of course there's a girl (hottie Megan Fox) along for the ride, and of course the 'Cons catch up with our heroes, leading to giant robot fight after robot fight. Adding to the run time are some lame government sponsored hackers investigated Decepitcons attacks (made even lamer by the fact that we the audience already know more than they do about the Transformers, thank-you opening Optimus Prime narration), a big and useless part for the the Secretary of Defense (a puffy Jon Voight), and a mysterious, X-Files-esque government agency (led by a way over-the-top John Turturro).

The special effects are surprisingly impeccable. The transformations are flawless, with cars, jets, and tanks changing into gigantic, real-looking robots. I didn't see one shot that seemed fake, or less than photo-realistic.

The action scenes, wherein the Autobots and Decepticons do battle (or wherein the 'Cons battle the U.S. military) are extremely visceral (my favorite shot being Optimus Prime running Decepticon-leader Megatron through an office building) if not entirely well-choreographed. Characters (including the giant robots) seem to go missing for stretches of time, and due to over-complicated robot design, it's often hard to tell which robot is which during Bay's patented quick cuts.

But where Transformers really fails is in its characters. Outside of Shia Lebeouf (who really does make the best of some wickedly bad dialog and situations), I don't buy a single character in the film. In fact, they're not even really characters, they're caricatures, all there just to help move the plot along and throw out a lame joke or two (I must mention how funny Transformers tries to be...and how badly and broadly the jokes fall).

The prevailing attitude on this film seems to be "well, this is a dumb idea anyways, so let's make it as stupid as possible." Instead of trying to build something of a believable world (see Independence Day for a somewhat successful example of this), Transformers is more interested in crude humor (I mean, there are two urination jokes and one scene-length masturbation joke, that seems excessive for a movie supposedly geared towards kids, even if it is PG-13) and unmotivated action sequences.