By Jason Haskins
In the latest Transformers film, the follow-up to 2009’s disastrous Revenge of the Fallen, Michael Bay tries to make a movie to end a trilogy on—and what a way to go out! The last fifty minutes of the movie are full of robotic bedlam of epic proportions with explosions, robot-to-robot combat, and other ridiculous CGI stunts to make Transformer nerds crumble in delight.
The basic premise is that the space race of the sixties was put into effect because of an alien craft that landed on the moon, which the Autobots (good guys) and the Decepticons (bad guys) are both after. Apparently the craft holds key Transformers weaponry. This leads to young Sam Witwicky’s involvement years later after the events of the first two films where he finds himself unused by the government and feeling like a nobody now that no one needs him anymore. It doesn’t stay that way for long as a conspiracy plops itself literally into his lap and he learns of the human involvement in one of the greatest threats in all of mankind. Will the Autobots be able to stop the Decepticons’ biggest and baddest plot?!
It all boils down to my complete and utter disinterest in the plot. At the end of the day all I saw were a ton of special effects and over-acting and ridiculous Michael Bay elements, which completely muted whatever type of drama was being created. If I was a fan of Transformers it’s possible I would have found this more interesting. The movie does suffer from the third-times-the-charm where they tried to pump up everything full of steroids to blast the previous two films out of the water and they certainly do that…but to mixed results.
The only thing I dug about this movie were the visuals. I saw the film in 3D ($12 bucks I’m not sitting on anymore) and it definitely added to the experience. Things looked vibrant and the action looked pretty intense. The CGI was mostly incredible with some really interesting action scenes of Chicago being invaded by the Decepticons and an all-out war between the good guys and the bad guys. I particularly dug a scene involving a tumbling building with LeBeouf’s character inside it.
LeBeouf actually does a decent job as being the everyman here who’s charming and actually quite funny in the movie. Megan Fox has been booted from the series after calling Bay a Nazi prompting producer Steven Spielberg to give her the Schindler’s Fist of firings and has been replaced with Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who is really stunning. That’s all she really is, as her character could have been completely omitted from the film without altering anything. Other supporting characters include Frances ‘donchaknow’ McDormand as a no-bullshit government suit, Patrick Dempsey as a little rascal, John Malkovich as Witwicky’s boss, and the epic return of Tyrese Gibson for the African-American perspective.
A few blaring problems was the screenplay and the direction right off the bat. First of all, the flick is over two hours long and takes about forty-five minutes to really amp up towards anything and once everything does start happening it turns stupid very quick. Let me restate that and say the whole flick is sort of stupid. I mean, the premise is a little half-baked with the ultimate plan being very disappointing in the midst of all this epic ambition and chaos. Michael Bay definitely uses spectacle over substance and I won’t even say style as the majority of the movie is computer generated. The last thirty minutes were good, sure, but I was ready for it to be over three quarters of the way through the film. There’s only so much time I can commit to talking robots and bad dialogue.
Overall, this is a movie to be enjoyed by mainstream Summer audiences looking for explosions and lackluster stories. I’m not a big Transformers fan so I didn’t see what all the hoopla was about, but perhaps those in the know will dig it more than me. I will say that this is the best one of the whole series with some really cool action sequences and a more fun approach than anything they’ve done previously. However, at the end of the day I wish I had seen something else—and that’s how the cookie crumbles.
© Jason Haskins, 2011
2 out of 5 Stars
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