Transformers - Live Action Movie

[Dan M]

I'm by no means a Transformers geek.  Unlike many of my friends, I just was never into it as a child.

Still, I am anticipating this movie as much as I have any movie without Jedi or DC superheroes.

I've watched that Yahoo!-exclusive trailer many, many times now.  That one shot of the robot transforming to a jet and screaming out of there is freakin' awesome. 

They've got my $10.

[Roddenberry]

Transformers 1.5 / 5

Less Than Meets The Eye

Well that's 2hrs 11 I'll not get back, I know the running times 2hrs 17, but the disc skipped 2 minutes thrice, I wish it could have jumped more.  The 1986 movie is far more palatable as a piece of entertainment. Eighty minutes in, I was wishing for it to end, worst movie I've seen this year.

When it comes to the reason a lot of people watched this, the Autobots & Decepticons, I have to say I hate Bay's take on the robot's appearance and with his cut and flash style cinematography and the similar looks of all the Transformers in their robot state means you lose track of who you're actually watching, not that it seems to actually matter with the titular characters having no real personalities or uninteresting fight scenes.

And the actual Robots weren't the worst thing in this film, a stoned Chihuahua, really, in an action film? And the appalling hiding sequence outside the Witwicky house, the Section 7 stuff Men In Black (cheap) rip-offs.  The tree climbing kid, the appalling scene with the weird cop, the unnecessarily gratuitous Megan Fox/Bumblebee hood scene and lets not forget the awful acting from Miss Fox and plus score sounded like rip-offs off various film, I swear I noticed bits similar to those in Con Air and the Rock, as well as others.

That said, I didn't hate everything, Shia Labeouf, the special forces team and the hackers (especially the aussie and Anthony Anderson), all put in decent performances, unfortunately not enough to transform this turkey.

Congratulations Michael Bay, you've made me yearn for the days of Rodimus Prime and he was awful.