Here are some pretty positive ones :
http://www.stuff.co.nz/northland/4115437a23018.html
Awaited by fans, this popular children's cartoon, which I remember from my own childhood, hits the big screen.
It began long ago on the planet Cybertron, where there was a war between the Autobots and the Decepticons for control over Allspark - a magical talisman that grants infinite power to whoever possesses it.
The Autobots (the goodies) smuggled Allspark off Cybertron but were eventually tracked to Earth by Megatron - the leader of the Decepticons.
Here he ended up in the Arctic Ocean, but just before slipping into a cold-induced comatose state he engraved a map into the glasses of Captain Archibald Witwicky, giving the location of the Allspark, which he also transmitted back to Cybertron.
A century later Sam Witwicky (Spike) buys his first car, which turns out to be an Autobot in disguise, sent to protect him because he bears the engraved glasses.
Simultaneously, two Decepticons attack an American military base in Qatar, forcing the Pentagon to send its special Sector Seven agents to capture the aliens.
Spike ends up in the midst of a raging battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons.
With outstanding special effects, near flawless robotic transformations and outstanding fight sequences, 'Transformers' offers viewers an exciting science fiction movie packed with action, a great story and some humour for light relief.
Rated M - younger viewers may be scared in some parts - and running for 143 minutes, Transformers shouldn't be missed by fans of the TV series.
However, I would say that there were also a lot of people in the audience who are not avid fans of the series and in the history of my cinema reviewing in Whangarei this is the first time that a mainstream movie received a standing ovation.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/321880_transformers02q.html
'Transformers': It's all about the sheer visceral rush of mega action
By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE P-I
The new "Transformers" feature, based on a line of toy action figures that spawned a series of animated TV shows and a 1986 animated feature, is a screeching metal, smash-and-crash, extreme-action movie lover's dream come true. It's also a wildly absurd, visceral fantasy and far more fun than it ought to be. The millenniums-long war between two alien races of sentient machines, the chivalrous Autobots and the vicious Decepticons (registered trademarks both, of course), lands on Earth. The quantum Erector Set creatures unleash epic levels of property damage and urban destruction in their battle over a sacred cube called the Allspark, which has the power to turn ordinary mechanical objects into living creatures with a bad attitude.
That's the plot in a nutshell, at least as Autobot leader Optimus Prime (original cartoon voice actor Peter Cullen, full of paternal authority and moral conviction) lays it out for high school goofball Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf).
Sam is the key to finding this all-powerful life-giving battery and saving the planet from a mechanical makeover, which is why the Autobots assigned a high-performance bodyguard (disguised as a beat-up Camaro) to the kid. The Camaro also plays amateur matchmaker between Sam and a high school hottie (Megan Fox) with a mechanical aptitude and a juvie record. Who knew that cars from outer space were both moralists and romantics?
The rest of the complications -- the U.S. Air Force squad in Qatar hunted by an unidentified killing machine, the geek squad drafted by the secretary of defense to trace the high-tech invasion, John Turturro's bizarre appearance as a hard-case agent from the classified Section Seven -- are mere details around the edges.
It's all about the sheer visceral charge of mechanics in motion. These living robots fold themselves like mechanical origami figures with break-dancing flair and eye-popping splendor, morphing in midflight from robot to vehicle and back again, and laying waste to entire cities in a full-on killbot death match. They may declaim in word balloons right out of cheesy comics and bad cartoons, but they are grandeur in motion, created with a detail of computer animation so impressive it's hard not to believe in them.
Director Michael Bay manages (with help from producer Steven Spielberg?) to both take this absurd pulp premise seriously and have a blast with the absurdity of it all. He even (however awkwardly) turns a scene of robot hide-and-seek into good-natured slapstick farce, which only begs the question: How do these super-sized Swiss Army Knives manage to skitter about suburbia without the Neighborhood Watch getting wind of them?
If you're too caught up in such snags in logic to enjoy the spectacle, you are clearly at the wrong film.
This is a movie for everyone who smiles in anticipation of mechanical Armageddon promised in the rallying cry: "Autobots -- roll out!"
http://www.firstshowing.net/2007/07/01/jaqs-review-transformers-a-good-film-in-disguise/
Jaq's Review: Transformers - A Good Film In Disguise
About twenty minutes into Michael Bay's tent-pole blockbuster
Transformers my eight-year-old nephew Bailey said, without ever taking his eyes off the screen, Now, this is the good part." What he was referring to was the first major battle between competing super robot factions Autobots and Decepticons. And he was right.
Sure, the film opens up with a slight bit of action, a transforming helicopter named Blackout destroying an army base in the Middle East, but since there's no context yet, it almost doesn't register. The army doesn't stand a chance against the helicopter/robot since there hasn't been any time to learn his weaknesses and Blackout gets the information he wants while eliminating most of the personnel and equipment. Once this bit of excitement ends, however, we move to the suburban landscape inhabited by our human star, Sam Witwicky (
Shia LaBeouf). In the next twenty minutes or so, we get all the background we're going to get (and, let's face it, all we really need). All the plot point which are going to play out over the next two and a half hours are laid out and we're strapped in for a wild ride.
Sam, it seems, is the key to the whole shebang. He has the map the robots are looking for in order to find the All Spark," the source of their power. If the Decepticons get hold of it, they can turn everything on Earth into an evil robot and thereby take over the planet. The Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, have come to Earth to stop them. Sam, along with new girlfriend Mikaela (
Megan Fox) and Captain Lennox (
Josh Duhamel), help out in whatever form they can, proving again and again that human spirit is worth saving.
But is the film worth seeing? If you're eight, the answer is a resounding yes: It's got lots of action and it's the best film ever!" Even if you're older than eight it does have lots of action. And not much more. This isn't a bad thing, mind you. I think this is one Michael Bay finally got right. Instead of doing something he's not good at (i.e. tell a story), he focuses on the action and keeps only the barest minimum of plot, just enough to propel the sequences most of the audience is there to see anyway. And action sequences Bay does well. Well enough that an eight year old can sit, spellbound, for close to three hours. Sure, sometimes the effects move at seizure inducing speeds, and the Autobots are only differentiated from the Decepticons by the color of their eyes, so sometimes it's not easy to tell who to root for, but overall, the effects are worthy of the admission price.
With that in mind, what little there is of the script still leaves a bit to be desired. Bay can't resist cheap jokes (Bumblebee, Sam's new car, can only speak through the radio and, ironically, only bad 80's pop), visual puns, (Barricade, the evil cop car, has To Punish and Enslave" written on his side) and the dialogue is laughable. But again, that's not what you're going there to see. If you want a solid script and great acting, odds are you're not paying 10 bucks to see a Michael Bay film, but if you're looking for a way to get out of the heat for a little while, go pretend you're eight and enjoy yourself.
Believe me a lot of girls if there bf's want to see it again will go with them again. Except for the ones I mentioned above.
But it will be very appreciate imho in all the remaining audience. The flirt between Sam and Mikaela goes so obviously that could be not considered as the "romance" side of the story.
