TRANSFORMERS (2007)

SHORT REVIEW: It's Terminator II but remade for morons. There are plenty of flashy lights, loud sounds and it has a beat and you can dance to it. This is the cinematic equivalent of a Britany Spears video. It is all flash and no substance. Now, I understand we’re talking The Transformers – this is a movie based on a stupid marketing campaign for kids. This isn’t supposed to be high art, it’s a McMovie. Even lowering the bar to meet the standards of a shallow attempt to sell more crap to the young audience, this effort still comes up wanting. Michael Bay, the king of context free film making, has made one heck of a useless amusement ride. To be fair to the man, his goal here is to sell tickets and prompt simpleton kids to buy hunks of robot shaped crap down at Target. On this sole front he is successful. On every other level this film has no function, no form and nothing to offer. Let’s begin with the story. The plot, such as it is, revolves around awkward teenager Sam (Shia LaBeouf), who finds himself caught up in a battle between a race of interstellar robots. Said robots are searching for a large cube which will lead to the salvation or enslavement of the universe. Sam is joined by his slutty new pal Mikaela (Megan Fox) as they battle the evil robots and try to find said cube. The story goes on for literally an hour too long thanks to idiotic sidetracks. The love interest between Sam and Mikaela takes forever to get going and by the time that’s all set up the Transformers part of the plot, such as it is, has to rush to get to the main conflict. This is a waste since the relationship between these two kids isn’t believable and somewhat irritating. As pretty as she is, Megan Fox is not an actress – she’s a model. LaBeouf could have done his scenes with a well dressed blow up doll and gotten the same emotional punch. It says something though that Fox’s corpse like performance didn’t really stand out much when held against the rest of the production. The movie is presumptively made for children - if you’re into this kind of nonsense and you’re an adult, it’s time to move out of your parents basement, put down the Xbox 360 and join the rest of us grown ups in the real world. The movie is littered with casual sexual references and is loaded with the obligatory scatological jokes (the tedious gag of a robot spewing its oil instead of urine or feces is done for the thousandth time). We can’t just have a simple movie about battling robots, there’s got to be foul material shoehorned in because heaven forbid kids can’t sit for five minutes without lowbrow junk tossed in their direction. As readers here know, I’m not against lowbrow humor but in instances like this it is out of place and inserted because the filmmakers don’t have respect for their audience. It is unneeded and coarse. Now, I will admit that it’s not overbearing by any stretch of the imagination but there’s enough masturbation, drug and other lowbrow content to warrant a mention. I stated earlier that this film doesn’t have any function – that’s not really true. You can use this movie to help your surfing online. Keep this title in mind when you come across a movie reviewer. When you hit their site, look this movie up. If they claim this is a great film, it’s fun or interesting in anyway, you will know you’re dealing with a moron who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Anyone who reviews movies and claims this thing has any value is like a food critic exclaiming the taste and potency of Ding-Dongs. This movie is a half-cooked, visually uninspired waste. Even the fight sequences are poorly handled. Every sequence is shot too close so the audience can’t see and keep track of the action. This is the sole purpose for showing up in the first place. Michael Bay’s job is to hypnotize the audience by flashing lights for two hours and he even screws this up. There is no way, under no reasonable set of expectations that one can find value in this movie.