http://www.empireonline.com.au/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=11052
Transformers
Plot
Two tribes of robots, disguised as everyday vehicles and objects, live on Earth. The Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, are decent blokes who respect human life. The Decepticons, led by Megatron, believe in the survival of the fittest and despise organic life. Things get hairy.
Empire Review
When it comes to blowing up **** real good, the final 30 minutes of Transformers may well be Michael Bay’s Sistine Chapel. If it can burst into flame, be riddled with bullets, pulverised, smashed, flipped, battered through a skyrise or slammed into a road, it is, with the resulting debris gleefully hurled into our faces as the Dolby thunder threatens eardrums and sanity. The camera swoops, pans, ducks and dives to keep pace with the flailing robots, crusading tanks, streaking missiles, jets and choppers. No scene is stretched beyond three seconds in case the audience – presumed to be addled with ADD – should find its collective mind wandering. In between the carnage – relocated to the centre of Los Angeles for no good reason other than to fuel Bay’s appetite for destruction – dialogue is reduced to military macho shorthand (“Bring the rain”, “Bring it!”, “I’ll drive, you shoot”
while emotions – love, fear – are best expressed in golden lit, slow-motion close ups of eyes widening, lips glistening, fingertips touching just so. This has always been the way of the Bay, but in Transformers the master of disaster has finally matched form with function. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying he’s the perfect director to make a movie based on toys.
These action figures in question were the 1984 Hasbro line of little robots who, with a twist, became cars, trucks, planes, etc. As a marketing push, a cartoon series was built up around Transformers. It subsequently became a 1986 animated movie. A cult was born and its membership remains strong enough that there has been a heated debate about this adaptation and Bay’s designs on their beloved Autobots and Decepticons.
Transformers acolytes have little to complain about in terms of design because, for what it is, Bay’s boffins deliver an updated, relatively believable realisation of the shape-shifting abilities of this metallic-organic, alien-robot thingamajig-species-product line. No fear on that score: the special effects set a new benchmark.
Pity, then, that to adhere to the original “vision” these creatures have to talk. Bumblebee, the hero’s masculine version of Herbie, is the strongest, most interesting of the robots because he’s unable to speak, except via snippets of conversation he samples from his car radio. When his good-guy comrades – Optimus Prime, Jazz, et al – start with the wisecracks and movie quotes, anyone other than a 10-year-old boy or an ardent fan of the original series will want to hide under their seat from embarrassment. (Just as awkward are the movie’s “hip” moments: Wince as Bay almost mocks Armageddon! Blush as Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is pointlessly referenced!) Thankfully the Decepticons – Megatron, Starscream, Blackout, et al – are less verbose, limiting themselves to evil Mogwai-style cackles and roared threats of extermination.
Lining up for humanity, Shia LaBeouf is winning as Transformers hero kid Sam Witwicky. Like he was in Disturbia, he’s a nervy, funny and smart-mouthed geek; an Everykid firmly in the Spielbergian mould. He scores laughs when the script’s up to scratch, and his realisation that there’s “more than meets the eye” to his beat-up Camaro is fun.
But the movie sags whenever it moves away from LaBeouf and we’re forced to spend time with dull stereotypes. There’s Megan Fox’s model-looking school hottie *****… who just happens to be a sensitive girl and a whiz with engines. There’s similarly babelicious Aussie Rachael Taylor who’s possibly the only – snicker – rad computer hacker in the world to get around in high heels. Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel lead a gang of indestructible G.I. Joes, er, US Special Ops hardnuts who pour hot lead in the Decepticons’ direction. Jon Voight is the pasty-faced politician who, like Dick Cheney, wields a mean shotgun when need be. As the boss of the secretive Sector 7, John Turturro at least gets some weirdly funny moments (“Criminals are… hot!”
even if it feels like he wandered in from another, edgier movie.
In its first and mostly human hour Transformers does shape up well. The teen comedy tropes engage thanks to LaBeouf, there’s a sense of discovery and wonder, and Bay’s three action set pieces are intense and exciting. But then the film bogs down in exposition. Computer hacker makework takes an eternity to tell us what we already know. And the less said about the Transformer backstory the better; put it this way, we can suspend disbelief more easily when encoded spectacles and a magic Rubik’s Cube aren’t explained.
In its final third, as the film focuses on duelling robots and greater and greater havoc, we care less and less, particularly because most of the people, an afterthought to begin with, dwindle to almost nothingness. The special effects are undoubtedly amazing but they’re so frenzied it’s tough to keep track of who’s doing what to whom. The ultimate effect is anaesthetising when it should be exhilarating.
Verdict
At its most inspired, Transformers calls to mind Terminator 2 or Starship Troopers. What we end up with is more like a gazillion-dollar version of Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla. This is precisely middle-tier Bay: below The Rock, Bad Boys and Armageddon, above Pearl Harbor, The Island or Bad Boys II.
Reviewer: Michael Adams
....maybe len wiseman could have shot this (Spielberg approved) script better)
