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Transformers (2007)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Based on the popular toys that transform from machines into giant robots, this live-action movie from Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay finds the planet Cybertron inhabitants engaging in a secret war for control of Earth’s natural resources, which they desperately need for fuel. Able to disguise themselves as cars, airplanes, boats and more, the transformers prove a tough enemy in this film starring Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel and Jon Voight.
REVIEW: One of my friends claims that all you need for a great movie is giant robots, guns and hot chicks. If this is true, then Transformers is a perfect film because it certainly contains none of those pesky elements like plot, good acting, pacing or subtlety. Every plot point presented in the film either gets completely lost in the noise of the action, or it was written for the express purpose of explaining one or another of the multiple 5-second sequences that make up the movie’s grand finale. The acting is universally bad, the robots look terrific, but they really have no character. Near the end of the movie, Megatron rips one of the Autobots in half. I have no idea which Autobot it is, and I frankly don’t care.
The action starts from almost the first frame of this 2-hour, 20-minute bloated, product-placement-laden behemoth. A US military installation in Qatar is attacked. You get a first glimpse at what appears to be five or six characters you might want to get to know better. Well, too bad, because all you really get is that one soldier has a wife and a baby, and they are good at shooting at Transformers and getting killed or wounded by Transformers. Then, in the midst of this world crisis, we switch to Shia LaBeouf trying to get financing for a car. Now, I normally like LaBeouf, but here he mostly just hams it up, going way over the top and not in a good way. Anyway, he gets a car that turns out to be alive, a member of the Autobots, here on Earth to save the world, but able to take time out to make sure LaBeouf gets the girl.
Speaking of the girl, I’m not quite sure WHY LaBeouf would be interested in her. I mean, sure, she’s hot. But Megan Fox is such a terrible actress that they could have stuck a blow-up doll in her place and it would have emoted as well. In one of those plot points invented to explain why, at the end of the film, the hot girl knows how to hot wire a car, it turns out that her daddy is in prison and she has a *gasp* juvie record.
To give Ms. Fox a wee bit of credit, award-winning actors also appear in this movie, and they look nearly as wooden as the hot chick. Jon Voight won an Oscar, for God’s sake, but you would never guess it based on the ridiculous performance in Transformers. John Turturro also debases himself by appearing in this movie. In the spring of 2007, Bruce Willis said of Michael Bay, “Few people will work with [Michael Bay] now, and I know I will never work with him again.” Seeing the script and the performances for Transformers, I can see why.
Honestly, I could go on and on and on about all the terrible things about this film, but I think its Cardinal Sin is that it failed to engage me. I admit freely to being awestruck by the special effects, but there is so much F/X and so many characters, and the film doesn’t really take the time to get to know them at all. Michael Bay instead chooses to mash the pedal on the floor and just go for action sequence after action sequence after action sequence with no real substance between them.
In fact, nothing in Transformers inspired any emotion in me at all
(except for disdain). Film is supposed to be art. I certainly understand that not all cinema is supposed to be High Art, but the purpose of even popular art is to inspire emotion in people. At the very least, I should experience a fleeting fear that the bad guys might prevail. When watching Transformers, my not-so-fleeting hope was that the Decepticons might prevail, because then all life on Earth could be wiped out, and then Michael Bay would finally not be able to finance his next film.
2 stars (the CGI really is spectacular)
Lori
Transformers (2007)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Based on the popular toys that transform from machines into giant robots, this live-action movie from Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay finds the planet Cybertron inhabitants engaging in a secret war for control of Earth’s natural resources, which they desperately need for fuel. Able to disguise themselves as cars, airplanes, boats and more, the transformers prove a tough enemy in this film starring Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel and Jon Voight.
REVIEW: Michael Bay’s best film since The Rock. The script is dumb as dirt, par for the course with Bay, and there is about 30 minutes of material that should probably have been left on the cutting room floor (the eye-rollingly bad scenes with the parents should have been the first to go), but the special effects and action are so fun that I gladly went along for the ride anyway.
3 stars
HAWK
Netflix Cinemajig 