Transformers movie review
I guess I will have to say that this movie review is going to be the lone review standing out saying I did not like the Transformers movie that is out. It seems the few friends I have talked to about the movie loved it, thought it was fantastic and, since I have a tendancy to sort of 'over analyse' films, they refuse to listen to my opinion. All I am allowed to say is "I did not like the movie" and that is all they want to hear.
So, going to write my reasons here as to why I thought the movie was not that good, and I will tell you now that this review will include many many spoilers since that is what I had problems with. After all, as I have often believed, the Devil is often in the details.
On the surface, I would have to say that the movie had it's good points. The main kid character, Sam Witwiky played by Shia LaBeouf, was amusing, gauky, comic and basically a person that all teens in high school outside of spoiled brats and football jocks could relate to. Often his lines worked with the scenes and he was the character that the average kid could think of becoming. However, his female lead (and love interest in his life) Mikaela Banes played by Megan Fox was a severe disappointment. Well, maybe I should say disappointment if you actually expect acting, believability and a little thing called 'character depth'. If, however, you were just expecting a nice ass, killer body and sexy pouty looks now and then to fire your male hormonal rockets, then oh man did this woman nail the part! Who knows? perhaps from the director point of view, that was all that he wanted. He wanted to show that this girl really was a shallow and insignificant character with no real personality whatsoever and had lived her life on just her looks alone and really had no interest in developing some sort of personality. Her best moment was when she cracked open the hood of Bumblebee and looked under with her sexy hip pose and sweat all over her. That one shot was her best acting scene in the whole movie. Didn't speak a single word, just stood there and let her 'ass'ets be known.
The other characters had a few moments of amusement, they sort of set the scene for some good acting. Jon Voight and John Turturro played their respective military/agency men characters extremely well and were great in all the right places. The voices and action of a few of the Autobots were good. The few lines by Ironhide and Ratchet were well placed and showed some good character. Bumblebee was interesting with him only being able to talk through the radio was alright. Though a HUGE disappointment in Optimus Prime. I mean, I remember the cartoons, and Prime was extremely honourable and rightgeous, but this movie took him WAY over the top. I mean, some of his words, though nice and all, did not fit the movie in my opinion. At least back in the cartoon when no one died (few flames, few explosions but you always saw the people walking away from the wreckage) Prime's honourability had a place and was expected. But when you have Decepticons killing people left, right and centre, going completely ape shit on an entire city, Prime's standing tall "we shall fight. We shall prevail. We shall protect the humans at all cost because *insert long winded cheesy talk regarding freedom, choice and rights here*" just is too much. I have to say that during the final battle I was preying for either Sam to sacrifice Prime or for Megatron to win just to shut up his self rightgeous crap. I mean, honour and all is good, his sentiments were fine, but he reminded me of the religious spouting fanatics that knock on your door and force you to lie flat on the floor with the lights out so you don't have to listen to their views and all.
The story and plot were also incredibly lame and just a huge disappointment. There were so many things that happened in that movie that had me going "what? are they even thinking clearly?" But, then again, I had to remind myself that these are military trained men and military ministers making decisions so they really arent the best or brightest ones in the bunch. Decepticons are coming to attack, big ass killer death robots that have no respect for human life, and you have something that they want but are trying to get it to another location. Hey, I know, great idea, let's take that item, run it to the middle of downtown of a major city where hundreds of humans are walking and driving around and let's then be shocked and amazed that they are going to open fire and blow up a lot of buildings and hurt/kill a lot of innocent people. Granted, these are the same army people that brought you Iraq and the WMD hunt. That was only one thing in the whole movie that had me going "What?". Trust me, if you go and actually think about the movie and what is happening instead of just looking for explosions and hot girls butts, then you might find yourself wondering as well.
Things that the writers changed about the Transformers that I did not like now. I remember the movie/cartoon about how the Transformers crashed on Earth and the on board computer did a scouting recon of the area and fixed the damaged Transformers and gave them the vehicles that they could transform into. In this movie, I got the impression that the robots could basically scan vehicles and take on their outwards appearance. Bumblebee scans a new camero after being insulted by Mikaela about him transforming to '..this hunk of crap.' When the Autobots crash to Earth, they each seem to pick the vehicle they want to become and then take that form. Ok, fine, I will buy that. I will even buy the fact that since they wanted to be undercover and not noticed, no sense in scanning tanks or Anti-aircraft weaponary machines and try to drive that through the burbs since it would be noticed. But, after they knew where the Allsparks was and were planning to go and get it, why wouldn't they attempt to find vehicles that were more suited for the job? Then when they discover that the battle is being moved to the down town part of the city, they don't take a second to find some combat vehicles to change into but go in with just being cars. Call me crazy but to me that sounds like you putting a bunch of weaponry out in front of two different gangs and the bad guys grab guns, knives, metal pipes and chains. The other gang then grabs hair dryers, cuticle clippers and puts on Armani suits cause even though they are going to fight, they look stylish. No wonder the Autobots needed the help of the humans to take out a few of the Decepticons, cause they were ill-prepared and totally stupid.
In the end, I have to say that I enjoyed the movie for the first 15 minutes or so and then things started to happen that got me thinking and wondering and the next 2 hours and 15 minutes was total hell. I think that if I was able to 'transform' myself back to the mental age and acuity of an 8 year old (around the time I remember watching it as a kid) then perhaps it might have been a good movie and I would have enjoyed it. Too bad it wasn't so.
I give this movie 1 out of 5 stars, since both of my butt cheeks went number 15 minutes into the film.
So, going to write my reasons here as to why I thought the movie was not that good, and I will tell you now that this review will include many many spoilers since that is what I had problems with. After all, as I have often believed, the Devil is often in the details.
On the surface, I would have to say that the movie had it's good points. The main kid character, Sam Witwiky played by Shia LaBeouf, was amusing, gauky, comic and basically a person that all teens in high school outside of spoiled brats and football jocks could relate to. Often his lines worked with the scenes and he was the character that the average kid could think of becoming. However, his female lead (and love interest in his life) Mikaela Banes played by Megan Fox was a severe disappointment. Well, maybe I should say disappointment if you actually expect acting, believability and a little thing called 'character depth'. If, however, you were just expecting a nice ass, killer body and sexy pouty looks now and then to fire your male hormonal rockets, then oh man did this woman nail the part! Who knows? perhaps from the director point of view, that was all that he wanted. He wanted to show that this girl really was a shallow and insignificant character with no real personality whatsoever and had lived her life on just her looks alone and really had no interest in developing some sort of personality. Her best moment was when she cracked open the hood of Bumblebee and looked under with her sexy hip pose and sweat all over her. That one shot was her best acting scene in the whole movie. Didn't speak a single word, just stood there and let her 'ass'ets be known.
The other characters had a few moments of amusement, they sort of set the scene for some good acting. Jon Voight and John Turturro played their respective military/agency men characters extremely well and were great in all the right places. The voices and action of a few of the Autobots were good. The few lines by Ironhide and Ratchet were well placed and showed some good character. Bumblebee was interesting with him only being able to talk through the radio was alright. Though a HUGE disappointment in Optimus Prime. I mean, I remember the cartoons, and Prime was extremely honourable and rightgeous, but this movie took him WAY over the top. I mean, some of his words, though nice and all, did not fit the movie in my opinion. At least back in the cartoon when no one died (few flames, few explosions but you always saw the people walking away from the wreckage) Prime's honourability had a place and was expected. But when you have Decepticons killing people left, right and centre, going completely ape shit on an entire city, Prime's standing tall "we shall fight. We shall prevail. We shall protect the humans at all cost because *insert long winded cheesy talk regarding freedom, choice and rights here*" just is too much. I have to say that during the final battle I was preying for either Sam to sacrifice Prime or for Megatron to win just to shut up his self rightgeous crap. I mean, honour and all is good, his sentiments were fine, but he reminded me of the religious spouting fanatics that knock on your door and force you to lie flat on the floor with the lights out so you don't have to listen to their views and all.
The story and plot were also incredibly lame and just a huge disappointment. There were so many things that happened in that movie that had me going "what? are they even thinking clearly?" But, then again, I had to remind myself that these are military trained men and military ministers making decisions so they really arent the best or brightest ones in the bunch. Decepticons are coming to attack, big ass killer death robots that have no respect for human life, and you have something that they want but are trying to get it to another location. Hey, I know, great idea, let's take that item, run it to the middle of downtown of a major city where hundreds of humans are walking and driving around and let's then be shocked and amazed that they are going to open fire and blow up a lot of buildings and hurt/kill a lot of innocent people. Granted, these are the same army people that brought you Iraq and the WMD hunt. That was only one thing in the whole movie that had me going "What?". Trust me, if you go and actually think about the movie and what is happening instead of just looking for explosions and hot girls butts, then you might find yourself wondering as well.
Things that the writers changed about the Transformers that I did not like now. I remember the movie/cartoon about how the Transformers crashed on Earth and the on board computer did a scouting recon of the area and fixed the damaged Transformers and gave them the vehicles that they could transform into. In this movie, I got the impression that the robots could basically scan vehicles and take on their outwards appearance. Bumblebee scans a new camero after being insulted by Mikaela about him transforming to '..this hunk of crap.' When the Autobots crash to Earth, they each seem to pick the vehicle they want to become and then take that form. Ok, fine, I will buy that. I will even buy the fact that since they wanted to be undercover and not noticed, no sense in scanning tanks or Anti-aircraft weaponary machines and try to drive that through the burbs since it would be noticed. But, after they knew where the Allsparks was and were planning to go and get it, why wouldn't they attempt to find vehicles that were more suited for the job? Then when they discover that the battle is being moved to the down town part of the city, they don't take a second to find some combat vehicles to change into but go in with just being cars. Call me crazy but to me that sounds like you putting a bunch of weaponry out in front of two different gangs and the bad guys grab guns, knives, metal pipes and chains. The other gang then grabs hair dryers, cuticle clippers and puts on Armani suits cause even though they are going to fight, they look stylish. No wonder the Autobots needed the help of the humans to take out a few of the Decepticons, cause they were ill-prepared and totally stupid.
In the end, I have to say that I enjoyed the movie for the first 15 minutes or so and then things started to happen that got me thinking and wondering and the next 2 hours and 15 minutes was total hell. I think that if I was able to 'transform' myself back to the mental age and acuity of an 8 year old (around the time I remember watching it as a kid) then perhaps it might have been a good movie and I would have enjoyed it. Too bad it wasn't so.
I give this movie 1 out of 5 stars, since both of my butt cheeks went number 15 minutes into the film.
posted by Capt_Canuck at 7:04 AM
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