Transformers The Reviews Thread

[blind_fury]

I agree with whats in bold at the top. Reading some interviews in the past with musicians/bands I like has ruined some of my favorite songs. There have been songs that I loved because I found a connection with them in relation to my own life, once I had heard from the artist/musician what they were really about it totally ruined them for me. I was still able to listen to them and enjoy them, but it just wasn't the same.


For the two parts in bold near the bottom though. Doesn't that make everything you say, about the movie should have had those messages you saw in the show not valid or fact. As you and a few others like to make them out as.

In a lot of the arguments I've seen theres one side saying those messages in the show weren't intended or just aren't there, and theres the side thats saying they are. What you just said though basically says your "facts" are in fact your opinion of what you got out of it, as opposed to everyone elses' opinion on the other side of the argument.

Basically in short...who's to say as fact that this movie isn't faithful to the show(exact looks of characters not withstanding).

I have no problem if people don't see what I see in G1. What does bother me is when they trivialize and mock my interpretation and further conclude that the characters and story have no artistic merit or redeeming value because it was a cartoon made to sell something. thereby confusing the Hasbro execs with the imaginative artists who crafted the characters and mythos.

And my skepticism regarding Micheal Bay's treatment of the characters and story isn't just about accuracy but also about cheating the audience and fans by ignoring the reasons Transformers resonated in the first place so he could make an empty spectacle for a quick buck. I don't want too much lost in the translation. That may result in cheating people out of much that made it special in the first place.

 

[arty2]

USAToday review (positive)

'Transformers': Prime summer entertainment

By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY
Transformers (* * * out of four) will appeal to the kid in all of us.

Yes, it's loud, explosive and silly, but it also perfectly embodies the concept of a summer blockbuster with its simple good-guys-vs.-bad-guys plot, cheeky humor and flawless special effects. Transformers, opening tonight in many theaters, is easily the best movie based on an adaptation of a cartoon TV series.

Though it's at least 20 minutes too long and uneven dramatically (can you even say drama and Transformers in the same sentence?), the acting is sharp, and it features some of the most spectacular action and effects sequences of any movie of its kind.

The sum total of director Michael Bay's work has been spotty at best (The Island, Armageddon), but he made an inspired choice in casting the young, charismatic Everyman Shia LaBeouf (Disturbia). And surely the involvement of Steven Spielberg brings heft and sizzle to the entire production. Also, there are pleasant surprises in the supporting cast: an eccentrically creepy John Turturro, a likable Anthony Anderson and a valiant turn by Josh Duhamel.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Transformers | Autobots | Decepticons

LaBeouf stars as high school student Sam Witwicky, who buys his first car, a dented yellow Camaro that turns out to be an Autobot named Bumblebee. The car helps Sam team up with the object of his fantasies, Mikaela (Megan Fox). So much for the human story.

Meanwhile, other Autobots come from distant planets in search of the Allspark, which grants total power to anyone who possesses it. The Autobots are fending off the evil Decepticons. Each side wants to get their robotic limbs on the Allspark, which was stashed on Earth years before and found by Sam's great-grandfather on an Arctic expedition. Sam is unaware of his ancestor's role in the struggle between gargantuan space robots.

Earlier, a Decepticon taking the form of a fighter jet attacks a U.S. military base in Qatar, where soldiers including Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson wage an eye-poppingly explosive battle against an enemy they don't understand.

Turturro heads up a top-secret organization aimed at destroying the robots. He and his minions show up unexpectedly at Sam's house and whisk him away. This and the scenes that lead up to it, while the 'bots try to hide out in suburbia, are dazzling and quite comical.

The story falters during the protracted climax, but what remains is potent — sheer mindless fun and excitement. As a character watching the robots wreak havoc says: "This is 100 times better than Armageddon." (Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, brief sexual humor and language. Running time: 2 hours, 24 minutes.)

 

[arty2]

NY Times review (negative)

Movie Review: 'Transformers'
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: July 2, 2007

Car Wars With Shape-Shifters ‘R’ Us
DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures

Boys and their toys are in full formation in “Transformers,” a movie of epically assaultive noise and nonsense. Originating with the shape-shifting toys — created in Japan, rebranded in America — that transform from robots into stuff like cars and planes, then back again, the movie has been designed as the ultimate in shock-and-awe entertainment. The result is part car commercial, part military recruitment ad, a bumper-to-bumper pileup of big cars, big guns and, as befits its recently weaned target demographic, big breasts.

First introduced in 1984, just in time for the rise of geek culture, the Transformer toys have spawned comic books, television shows, video games, an animated feature and a fan base that has grown beyond children to include collectors like Steven Spielberg, an executive producer for the new movie. Not surprisingly, there’s a touch of mawkish Spielbergian sentiment in the movie’s empathetic hook, a riff on the boy and his alien friendship from “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” This time the boy is Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf, talking fast, running hard), a high schooler who discovers that his dingy 1970s Camaro is actually a gentle giant of a robot, Bumblebee.

There’s more — a few goofy caricatures, some throwaway laughs, a lot of technological gobbledygook, the usual filler. Written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who cobbled the story together with John Rogers, the movie takes flight with a raucous, confusing attack on an American military base in Qatar. There, under the desert sun, muscly, sweaty military types (Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson) clash with an ominous helicopter that converts into a mysteriously angry critter with an articulated tail like that of a scorpion. Back in the United States the secretary of defense (Jon Voight) barks orders at other military types while Sam juggles his weird ride, his mounting fear and his agitated hormones.

The guy charged with keeping the movie in gear is the director Michael Bay, the hard-core action savant whose other big-screen eruptions include “The Rock,” “Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor” and “Bad Boys II.” Like his last effort, “The Island,” this new flick isn’t as propulsive and casually sadistic as the movies that he made with the producer Jerry Bruckheimer (this carries a reasonable PG-13); it feels slower, more tamped down than the usual Bruckheimer assaults. The camera, or rather multiple cameras, are still shooting every which way, and the cutting sometimes registers as eye-blink fast, but not compulsively so. Mr. Bay allows himself to linger here and there, which explains the bloated, almost two-and-a-half-hour running time.

On the face of it “Transformers” is a story as old as the Greeks versus the Trojans, the difference being that these warriors are visitors from another planet, the 1980s-sounding Cybertron, and there isn’t a jot of poetry, tragedy, beauty, meaning or interest in this fight. The Autobots are trying to locate some all-important cube that looks like a Borg starship from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” before it’s found by the Autobots’ villainous alien brethren, the Decepticons. During their mission the Autobots blend into the earthly backdrop by turning into zippy cars and mondo trucks, a strategy that works particularly well in Southern California. Curiously, though the toys originated in Japan, no robot changes into a Toyota.

It’s kind of nifty when the robots transform the first time; they furiously shake back and forth like wet dogs desperately to dry off. But by the 99th time there’s no fun left at all, even during the rock-’em, sock-’em knockdown that delivers the movie, in Spielbergesque pastiche, first to a violent and then to a warm-and-fuzzy close. The actors tend to be more engaging, notably Mr. LaBeouf, who brings energy and a semi-straight face to the dumbest setup. Just as easy on the eyes, though for other reasons, are the two female leads, the genius hacker in throw-her-down heels (Rachael Taylor) and the grease-monkey bombshell (Megan Fox) who helps Sam rise to the manly occasion. These walking, talking dolls register as less human and believable than the Transformers, which may be why they were even allowed inside this boy’s club.

The movie waves the flag equally for Detroit and the military, if to no coherent end. Last year the director of General Motors brand-marketing and advertising clarified how the company’s cars were integral to the movie: “It’s a story of good versus evil. Our cars are the good guys.” And sure enough, most of the Autobots take the shape of GM vehicles, including Ratchet (a Hummer H2) and Ironhide (a TopKick pickup truck). The only Autobot that doesn’t wear that troubled automaker’s logo is the leader, Optimus Prime (a generic 18-wheeler tractor). Maybe that’s because the company didn’t want to be represented by a character that promises to blow itself up for the greater good, as Optimus does, especially one based on a child’s toy.

Shape-shifters of another kind, Hollywood action movies bend this way and that politically in a bid to please as many viewers as possible, but they almost always play out exactly the same, as entertaining violence leads to heroic individualism leads to the restoration of order. “Transformers” is no different, even if it does offer chewy distraction for the bored viewer: the would-be suicide bomber, American soldiers tearing it up in the Middle East while American cars keep up the fight at home, along with plugs for Burger King, Lockheed Martin, Mountain Dew and the Department of Defense. Why there’s even a president who asks for a Ding Dong. He’s wearing red socks like a big old clown, but no one really laughs.

 

[arty2]

NY Post review (negative)

OY, BAY! BIG ’BOTS DON’T HIT THE SPOT
By Lou Lumenick

Rating: 2 out of 4 stars

July 1, 2007 -- "THIS IS 10 TIMES cooler than ‘Armageddon,’” exclaims a youngster when he sees one of the title characters in “Transformers,” Michael Bay’s deafeningly loud and proudly silly epic inspired by Hasbro’s action-figure toys introduced in the 1980s.

The bombastic “Armageddon” director’s refusal to take the material too seriously - along with another funny and appealing performance by rising star Shia LaBeouf (“Disturbia&#8221 - turn out to be the saving graces of an uneven, overlong and at times overbearing flick.

“Transformers” does hit enough sweet spots to likely please the huge fanboy audience devoted to the toys and their earlier TV and movie spinoffs. They should feel free to add a star or two to my rating.

A box-office analyst whom I respect predicts “Transformers” will be the year’s top-grossing flick. If the enthusiastic response I saw at a screening the other night is any indication, predominately male audiences will flock to see some of Hollywood’s most lavish special effects ever, climaxing in a battle that destroys much of downtown Los Angeles.

Compared to the labyrinthine plots of some of this summer’s other blockbusters, this one is positively simple and easy to follow. Dad buys geeky seventh-grader Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) a beat-up 1976 Chevy Camaro that turns out to be Bumblebee, a member of a race of sentient alien robots who can disguise themselves as Earthly vehicles.

Thanks to Bumblebee, Sam soon finds himself with a totally hot fantasy girl (Megan Fox), as well as caught in the middle of a centuriesold battle between two groups of the sentient robots, the good Autobots and the evil Decepticons.

Both are seeking a mysterious cube known as the “Allspark” that contains their “life source.”

They want a pair of glasses belonging to Sam’s great-grandfather, an Arctic explorer, that will lead them to the Allspark - and so do a mysterious group of federal agents headed by John Turturro.

 

[arty2]

Roger Ebert's review (positive)

Transformers (PG-13)
BY ROGER EBERT / July 2, 2007

Rating: 3 out of 4 stars
After a string of bad-to-mediocre films, director Michael Bay scores with blockbuster battling robots in "Transformers."

Now I have fans who say, "We are so sorry, Michael Bay, you still suck but we love you." That's what the director of "Transformers" told Simon Ang during an interview in Seoul. He could have been speaking for me. I think Michael Bay sometimes sucks ("Pearl Harbor," "Armageddon," "Bad Boys II") but I find it possible to love him for a movie like "Transformers." It's goofy fun with a lot of stuff that blows up real good, and it has the grace not only to realize how preposterous it is, but to make that into an asset.

The movie is inspired by the Transformer toys that twist and fold and double in upon themselves, like a Rubik's Cube crossed with a contortionist. A yellow Camaro unfolds into a hulking robot, helicopters become walking death monsters, and an enemy named Megatron rumbles onto the screen and, in a voice that resembles the sound effects in "Earthquake," introduces himself: "I--AM--MEGATRON!!!"

I think that's the first time I've used exclamation points. But Megatron is a three-exclamation-point kinda robot. He is the most fearsome warrior of the evil Decepticons, enemies of the benevolent Transformers. Both races (or maybe they're brands) of robots fled the doomed planet Cybertron and have been drawn to Earth because Megatron crash-landed near the North Pole a century ago and possesses the Allspark, which is the key to something, I'm not sure what, but since it's basically an alien MacGuffin it doesn't much matter. (Note to fanboys about to send me an e-mail explaining the Allspark: Look up "MacGuffin" in Wikipedia.)

The movie opens like one of those teen comedies where the likable hero is picked on by bullies at school, partly because he didn't make the football team, and mostly because he doesn't have a keen car. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) talks his dad into buying him one, and he ends up with an old beater, a yellow Camaro that is actually the Transformer named Bumblebee and gets so mad when his paint job is insulted that it transforms itself into a shiny new Camaro.

This is more than a hot car. It plays the soundtrack to Sam's life. It helps Sam become visible to his sexy classmate Mikaela (Megan Fox), who says, "Do I know you?" Sam mentions casually that they take four classes together and have been in the same school since first grade. The high school stuff, which could be a teenage comedy on its own, segues into the battling robot stuff, and there is some low-key political satire in which the secretary of defense (Jon Voight) runs the country, while the president (not even credited) limits himself to a request for a Ding-Dong.

Voight sends the armed services into action, and we see a lot of Sgt. Lennox (John Duhamel) and Tech Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson). They and their men labor during much of the movie under the optimistic impression that a metal robot the size of a 10-story building can be defeated, or even brought to notice, automatic weapons fire. Sam and Bumblebee are crucial to the struggle, although a secret ops guy (John Turturro) asks the defense secretary, "You gonna lay the fate of the world on a kid's Camaro?"

Everything comes down to an epic battle between the Transformers and the Decepticons, and that's when my attention began to wander, and the movie lost a potential fourth star. First let me say that the robots, created by Industrial Light and Magic, are indeed delightful creatures; you can look hard and see the truck windshields, hubcaps and junkyard stuff they're made of. And their movements are ingenious, especially a scorpionlike robot in the desert. (Little spider robots owe something to the similar creatures in Spielberg's "Minority Report," and we note he is a producer of this movie.) How can a pickup truck contain enough mass to unfold into a towering machine? I say if Ringling Brothers can get 15 clowns into a Volkswagen, anything is possible.

All the same, the mechanical battle goes on and on and on and on, with robots banging into each other and crashing into buildings, and buildings falling into the street, and the military firing, and jets sweeping overhead, and Megatron and the good hero, Optimus Prime, duking it out, and the soundtrack sawing away at thrilling music, and enough is enough. Just because CGI makes such endless sequences possible doesn't make them necessary. They should be choreographed to reflect a strategy and not simply reflect shapeless, random violence. Here the robots are like TV wrestlers who are down but usually not out.

I saw the movie on the largest screen in our nearest multiplex. It was standing room only, and hundreds were turned away. Even the name of Hasbro, maker of the Transformers toys, was cheered during the titles, and the audience laughed and applauded and loved all the human parts and the opening comedy. But when the battle of the titans began, a curious thing happened. The theater fell dead silent. No cheers. No reaction whether Optimus Prime or Megatron was on top. No nothing. I looked around and saw only passive faces looking at the screen.

My guess is we're getting to the point where CGI should be used as a topping and not the whole pizza. The movie runs 144 minutes. You could bring it in at two hours by cutting CGI shots, and have a better movie.

 

[arty2]

Seattle Times's review (positive)

"Transformers" morphs from action to humor
Monday July 2, 2007

By Tom Keogh
Special to The Seattle Times

3 1/2 out of 4 stars

You can see the fingerprints of both director Michael Bay and executive producer Steven Spielberg all over "Transformers," an often-mesmerizing family film inspired by the Hasbro line of changeable toys and a 1980s animated TV series.

Bay's previous, ambitious spectacles ("Armageddon," "The Island") were marred by crassness and sprawling storylines. While Spielberg's well-crafted family films ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "E.T.") were marked by a self-effacing sense of humor.

For the most part, "Transformers" remains disciplined and engaging even as it punctuates relentless energy with frequent sight gags, parodies and sketch humor. The whole enterprise briefly threatens to become unhinged around the halfway mark (when John Turturro mockingly enters as an overbearing intelligence agent). But "Transformers" quickly rediscovers its bearings in time for an extraordinary third act that sets a new standard for marrying visceral human action with thrilling computer-generated effects. Its climactic battle sequence recalls another Spielberg triumph, "Saving Private Ryan."

At the center of the hoopla is Shia LaBeouf in a starmaking role as Sam Witwicky, a socially awkward adolescent who gets into the thick of a galactic war between rival clans of aliens. An item Sam puts up for sale on eBay, a pair of glasses that belonged to his great-grandfather, is feverishly sought by both the heroic Autobots and villainous Decepticons, giant robots that can quickly metamorphose into trucks, sports cars, tanks and even cellphones.

Kids of all ages who are passionate about their Transformer toys understand how turning one thing into another thing is a deeply satisfying and basic form of play. "Transformers" sticks to the spirit of that pure experience, dazzling us with living machines that restructure themselves constantly. They rage around the deserts of Qatar and streets of an American city; one folds into a jaunty Camaro that self-propels Sam and love interest Mikaela (Megan Fox) through dangerous nights.

Among the voices of the animated Autobots and Decepticons are Peter Cullen (who also worked on the TV show) as noble Optimus Prime and Hugo Weaving ("The Matrix") as the evil Megatron, the latter searching for a mysterious cube whose whereabouts lead to some imaginative, revisionist American history. A hammy performance by Jon Voight as a distraught secretary of defense and funny turns by Kevin Dunn and Julie White as Sam's anxious if well-meaning parents are just plain fun — as is the script's foray into the "real" reasons behind the creation of the Hoover Dam and microchip.

The only thing lacking in "Transformers" is the sense of event that Spielberg captured during the initial alien attack in "War of the Worlds." As with that film, it's hard not to see "Transformers" — with its Gulf War veteran troops fighting agents of terror on U.S. soil — as an allegorical reflection of contemporary fears. If the film had pushed that envelope a little more, even subconsciously, "Transformers" might have been an instant classic. But for what it is — an unexpectedly witty and exciting movie quick on its feet — it's a blast.

Tom Keogh: [email protected]

 

[millennium movies]

Roger Ebert's review (positive)

Thats the one i was waiting for!

 

[arty2]

Denver Post's review (positive)

"Transformers" toys with human emotions
Bots come to life with mix of animation and actors
By Lisa Kennedy
7/1/2007

Nope, never once commandeered a kid's robot toy as "Transformers" executive producer and dad Steven Spielberg admits to doing. Never read the comic books. Never watched the '80s cartoon series, unlike screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.

Heck, I didn't even make it through the 122-page novella Paramount calls production notes before heading to a screening of "Transformers."

So I report this with the heart of an innocent: Director Michael Bay's flick about a boy, a girl, a classic muscle car, and a rock-'em-sock'-em battle of alien robots is one of the most satisfying popcorn movies of the season.

With a Qatar dateline and lethal Trojan Horse-style robot attack of a U.S. military base, "Transformers" tempts a sociological riff or three.

Yet, the film's hurtling visuals and snappy pace (even at two-plus hours) allow many a postmodernist to escape overreaching tendencies.

This PG-13 whiplash ride of exhilarating effects - courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic - expresses its human dimensions with smirky humor.

What it doesn't have in smarts, it makes up for with nods to the power of affection, be it platonic or the more hormonally jazzed variety.

As hero Sam Witwicky, Shia LeBeouf's performance is an amalgam of the actorly and the authentic.

This meeting of the technical and the true in a character still shape-shifting from boy to man is a perfect complement to the Autobots, the movie's morally decent, morphing machines.

With buttah-like scenes of mechanical metamorphoses, "Transformers" is bold. Cars and fighter jets, cellphones and boom boxes reconfigure themselves with dizzying efficiency into robots, good or malicious. Better still, the visual interface between actors and digital wonders has a believably rendered scale and intimacy.

But the movie would never have pulled off its beautiful teen pleasures were we not taken with the souls of the Autobots and the chemistry between a boy and his first hoopty, a yellow-and-black-striped Camaro.

Kevin Dunn plays Sam's dad, who takes his kid to a used car lot to buy his first car. With not-so-subtle intervention, the shape-shifting Camaro - a.k.a. transformer Bumblebee (Mark Ryan) - chooses his driver.

"Transformers" zooms over rich philosophical territory about humans and our unerring need to find the personality in mechanical beings. Our search isn't a disorder. It's one of the qualities that make us so touching a species. It also suggests why this is indeed a lonesome planet.

No wonder we look to the heavens.

In a galaxy far, far away, a metallic voice recounts the catastrophic history of beings from his planet. One bot's ache for power leads to a planet-ending conflagration. And it sends the bad bot, Decepticon Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving), to Earth in pursuit of the All Spark, a cube of untold energy.

The fate of life on Earth rests with whichever bots find the cube.

Cut to the sands of Qatar bleached so white they might be confused with the Arctic Circle, where Sam's great- great-grandfather explored the snow and ice where Megatron met his cryo-suspension.

It is the cosmic coincidence of kin that leads the bot to Sam, a.k.a. ladiesman217, on eBay.

As Sam and Mikaela (Megan Fox), the enticing dish that stirs his teen hungers, are drawn closer by Bumblebee's machinations, the secretary of defense (Jon Voight), a code- breaking hottie (Rachael Taylor) and a genius hacker with a doughnut theory (Anthony Anderson) start to grasp how dire a situation the planet faces.

The whats and wherefors are hardly secondary to the movie.

Yet, unbraiding the twists (John Turturro plays a special-ops pain) will only make the flick less fun than it truly is.

"Transformers" ends with a faint whiff of melancholy.

As the sun sets on an iconic image of puppy love, American-style, a robot sentinel waxes sentimental.

His view of humankind is tender, generous. Which spawned a feeling: At least our machines love us.

Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or [email protected].

 

[arty2]

Atlanta Journal's review (positive)

'Transformers' action film of year

By BOB LONGINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
07/02/2007

Hot-shot director Michael Bay has a knack for masking ill-formed movie plots by piling on blistering action sequences.

"Transformers," which will have early public showings tonight before its official debut Tuesday, is his best cover-up yet.

This remarkable CGI sledgehammer, a live-action takeoff on the animated TV series about battling alien robots on Earth that morph into gigantic mechanical beasts, packs a powerful punch.

The movie is fun, full of through-the-roof special effects, often intentionally ridiculous, wildly uneven, and has plot holes bigger than its most heroic 'bot, Optimus Prime. Thankfully, it also has Shia LaBeouf, a kind of everykid actor who has the screen presence to glue the whole thing together.

It takes Bay ("The Island," "Pearl Harbor") less than 10 minutes to scoot through the story's setup and get to the first reveal: a monstrous robot assault on U.S. troops in Qatar. It's a wild, chaotic scene with bullets, explosions, running soldiers and big tanks tossed about like toys.

A good half-hour or more later, Bay kicks the movie into overdrive with a spectacular desert attack by a giant scorpion. There are quick cuts, swirling camera shots, wide shots from a fly-by jet and a fantastic stuntman effect (watch for an Arab to be twirled in the air).

It's this sequence that cements "Transformers" as the most interesting action movie so far this summer. That there have been so many sequels this season only enhances its appeal. Bay is giving audiences something that feels completely new, a twist on many a 'toon fan's childhood memory. Fanboys will eat it up.

They'll likely also forgive the story line's simplicity and clunkiness. Characters are established, then disappear in the blink of an eye. The action can be so frenetic that it's sometimes hard to discern which is the good 'bot and which is the bad.

There are so many throwaway bits — our president shown only as a red-sock-wearing drawler hungry for Ding Dongs, a hacker stuffing doughnuts down his gullet — that they become meaningless.

There's plenty here that rings the usual action-film notes. Josh Duhamel is the fighting solider and caring new father who gets to perform a long attack-a-'bot body slide that's almost worthy of Legolas in "Lord of the Rings." Megan Fox (of TV's "Hope and Faith") gets to play a grease-monkey, take-action girl in the vein of "Charlie's Angels."

But there's also Shia LaBeouf. As in his earlier, successful "Disturbia," he takes marginal material, turns on the personality, becomes the kind of kid who's half-dweeb, half-hero and, with his newfound robot pals, pretty much saves the whole darned movie.

 

[arty2]

NY Daily News' review (positive)

Bot-kickin' mayhem 3 out of 4 stars

Cars morph into giant fighting machines in action-filled thriller
By Elizabeth Weitzman
Monday, July 2nd 2007

Talk about getting your money's worth.

There is so much action packed into every second of "Transformers" that by the time it's over, you may be tempted to go outside and give the box office another 10 bucks.

Let's be clear: "Transformers" is a classic Michael Bay mega-movie. Interested in plot and character development? Move along. You're blocking the view.

But if you like your summer flicks huge and noisy, be sure to buy the biggest bucket of popcorn you can, because you're not leaving your seat once the lights go down.

Thanks to some of the best CGI work ever created, the Transformers you remember as toys and TV characters from the '80s have become massive, intricate affairs.

California teen Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) knows nothing about the Transformer phenomenon, however, when he buys a Camaro with some very strange skills. Before long, the car — named Bumblebee — has helped Sam with two equally important missions: seducing his longtime crush, and escaping the evil aliens who have recently dropped into the neighborhood.

Once he has gotten over the shock of having a car that can transform into a 20-foot robot at will, he learns that Bumblebee and other Autobots need his help recovering an all-powerful life force that their enemies, the Decepticons, are planning to steal. What this means for Sam is a race to save the planet. What it means for you is:

* Giant robots battling other giant robots to the death.

* Ear-shattering, adrenaline-pumping car chases.

* Every kind of ammunition ever made, exploding at once.

* Million-dollar sets being pulverized.

Since Bay oversizes everything, he was wise to cast LaBeouf, Hollywood's reliable new everykid. Each time the movie gets out of control, he grounds it with a wry sense of humor and, *frankly, the only multifaceted performance to be found. Otherwise, Bay peppers the movie with square-jawed soldiers (Josh *Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson), eye-*candy *actresses (Megan Fox, Rachael *Taylor) and check-cashing veterans (like *Defense Secretary Jon Voight).

Although it's hard to imagine anyone making a project of this magnitude more than once, the end strongly hints at a sequel (or two), on the assumption that the first will be a meteoric smash.

Gentlemen, start your engines.

 

[arty2]

Toronto Globe and Mail's review (mixed)

Everything, even the plot, blows up real good
Rating: **½

LIAM LACEY
July 2, 2007

Taken for what it is, a crowd-rousing summer blockbuster inspired by a children's mechanical toy, Michael Bay's Transformers is some kind of mess...terpiece.

The director, known for his outsized, hyperkinetic, special effects-driven spectacles from Armageddon to Pearl Harbor, has finally, under the guidance of producer Steven Spielberg, fashioned a story that has some emotional heart: A boy and his extraterrestrial car save the world. Shia LaBeouf, the young actor who starred in this summer's hits, Disturbia and the animated film, Surf's Up, plays a regular high-school kid, Sam Witwicky, with an easy good-humour, reacting to the director's computer-generated apocalypse.

Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman's script ties together the story of the boy and the rough Transformers mythology, developed by Marvel Comics in the eighties. The Transformers are a species of giant Titan-like cyborgs from a distant planet, who are divided into the heroic Autobots and villainous Decepticons.

With a few quick contortions, Transformers can turn from giant humanoid creatures to other mechanical objects, including a helicopter, tractor-trailer, car, tank or jet. The robots' story is told in the opening sequence, by the chief Autobot named Optimus Prime, who explains how millennia ago, the battery-like cube known as the Allspark, ended up in the Earth's Arctic regions, along with the darkest Decepticon of them all, Megatron, buried under polar ice. Though it was discovered by an Arctic explorer named Archibold Witwicky, he was assumed to be insane.

The later information is provided by his grandson, Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) in a senior high school show-and-tell project. Sam tries to use the occasion to auction off some of his grandfather's possessions, which he also put on eBay, in an attempt to raise money to buy his first car, which he is convinced will help him win the high school belle, Mikaela (Megan Fox), a tough-girl hottie who can also fix or hotwire cars.

When he arrives at the car lot with his dad, $4,000 in hand, he has an experience familiar with Disney's The Love Bug - a vintage yellow Camaro with racing stripes picks him. (It can open and close its doors, start and steer, and tune its radio to whatever channel it desires. The car, which is actually a bodyguard robot named Bumblebee, has been sent to protect Sam from evil Decepticons that are after his grandfather's glasses. (Why the Decepticons can't just buy them on eBay isn't explained.) Bumblebee tries to help Sam impress Michaela (Megan Fox) by parking, playing mood music, and performing wheelies for her.

Meanwhile, plot lines begin to tentacle out around the world. Shortly after a helicopter lands near the U.S. Mideast base, the machine flips into a mechanical scorpion that wipes out people and hacks into the military's computer system. The defence chief (Jon Voight) assembles a team of hip amateur hackers led by Maggie (Rachael Taylor) to thwart the mysterious attack. Two soldiers who survived the initial attack, (Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson), are brought to Washington for debriefing.

The script has many elements in common with Live Free or Die Hard, which opened last week. Both feature a nervous young man and his bullet-headed bodyguard (Bruce Willis, Bumblebee). Both have scenes of Pentagon officials yelling in front of giant screens in the face of a mysterious assault on the military's computer systems, both movies have improbable encounters involving tractor-trailers and jets and displays of gleaming military hardware. Both movies look for comic relief by portraying the ultimate hacker genius as a pudgy guy playing video games in his mother's basement: in Die Hard, it's Kevin Smith; here it's Anthony Anderson.

Bay is out for one-upmanship, even over his previous movies (at one point a boy looks up at a Transformer laying waste to the city and says, "Wow. This is 10 times cooler than Armageddon.") If Peter Jackson had one benign giant in King Kong, Bay has a team of big buddies for Sam. There's a palpable slip in suspense when the Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots reveal themselves to him, and the movie goes from thriller back to its Saturday morning cartoon roots. The introduction (including the embarrassing Jazz, the hip-hop Autobot) is followed by the movie's longest comic set-piece, a distinctly Spielbergian interlude where Sam tries to recover his grandfather's glasses, while trying to convince the Transformers to stay off his father's lawn. The comedy turns even broader with the arrival of John Turturro as the obstreperously self-important head of the government's top-secret Sector Seven alien program.

After two-thirds of a movie that mixes suspense and comedy, Bay goes into overdrive in the last third in a battle that ranges from the Hoover Dam to Los Angeles. Planes and cars and robots morph, fly and fire and explode across the screen, as the theatre floor vibrates with the pounding score. As is often the case with Bay's aggressive editing, the sense of time and space becomes so fragmented it's difficult to know who's doing what to whom and why.

The director's heavy-metal movie-making isn't about anything so archaic as a story, or even about the well-made sequence any more, but about the momentum and scale of images of destruction. Yet, by coupling his trademark mayhem to a kid-friendly story and some of Spielberg's main-street hokum, Bay has fashioned a movie that should have broad appeal. By the end of Transformers, viewers may not be sure exactly what they've seen but they'll know they've witnessed the birth of a new summer franchise.

 

[KenK]

Toronto Globe and Mail's review (negative)

I wouldn't call it negative so much as it's middle-of-the-road.

 

[kal-el2006]

moriarty transformers review and also another positive review

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/33213


http://www.aintitcool.com/node/33214

 

[Kap]

I'm not seeing TF until this Friday. And I'm hoping for reviews from BF, Wesyeed and Cflash by then. Two from opposing sides and one from the slightly leaning middle, perfect balance

Make them somewhat spoiler free though guys

 

[Anti-Moderator]

When he arrives at the car lot with his dad, $4,000 in hand, he has an experience familiar with Disney's The Love Bug - a vintage yellow Camaro with racing stripes picks him. (It can open and close its doors, start and steer, and tune its radio to whatever channel it desires. The car, which is actually a bodyguard robot named Bumblebee, has been sent to protect Sam from evil Decepticons that are after his grandfather's glasses. (Why the Decepticons can't just buy them on eBay isn't explained.) Bumblebee tries to help Sam impress Michaela (Megan Fox) by parking, playing mood music, and performing wheelies for her.

Cause Decepticons don't buy ***** they take it.

 

[SuperJediHero]

Most Non-fans will probably not really like this movie, UNLESS they are into Action/Special Effects movies.

It's appearant that latest surge of Negative reviews on RT are from critics that don't like Transformers much, and the TV/Radio are not even hyping about it!

ALL I hear about is "Harry Potter", "Harry Potter"....

Is it just Poor marketing that don't have enough TV Spot now, or Most non-fans really more crazy about Harry Potter than Transformers?

 

[Overman27pj]

Eberts Review is the one I cared about as well....sounds good to me...while he was bored with the climax battle That is what I have been waiting for!!!

 

[SuperJediHero]

The way they Promote this movie is Lacking, IMO.

I watch TV a lot, but I don't notice much Transformers TV Trailers at all!

 

[terry78]

Ebert liked it, that's good enough for me. One of the few that i truly respect as far as reviews go.

 

[Marvin]

I wish more reviewers were capable of this type of insight.

This guy's so good he could put most of the critics out of work with their dismissive "omg, it's teh based on a toy there4 it sucks!!!1!" reviews. That sums up every negative review on rottentamatoes. "Oh noes! it's based on toys so it automatically sucks!!!"

Required reading for people who think the TF mythos has no potential

well...what do we have here

i just read that review

seems to me that u've been debunked

i'll just get to the point(s)

what was that u've been saying for days now(probubly longer cause i haven't been around all that long)?

something about you will never agree with that checking your brain at the door approach to watching movies
u'll never let go of the idea that movies should be about mindless explosions and action

(and then i said..that's fine and no one should argue against that...NO ONE COULD ARGUE AGAINST THAT)

but rather..that this film has isn't that...

this film as with alot of films (bays stuff included) has plenty of subtext and it just takes a higher intellect to see it...
all that stuff is subjective and u have to find it for urself

as opposed to the masses that say aw hell..it's a bay film and i see explosions...
we actually have a reviewer who sees the brains behind it...
perhaps cause he "never checked his brain at the door"

hmmm

u said that bay didn't get what resonated with fans all those year ago?

well this movie is resonating with many...

it's my belief that u found what ever theme u may have found in that old show...but mostly it resonated with fans cause it was cool and great...and basically "fans" were too young to be glued to this show because of the SUBTEXT...(it may have been there..but) that's not what it was...the same way that the sub text in batman TAS isn't what gets an 12 year old to enjoy it...

this movie has different themes(apparently stronger themes and many more of them)...but what's resonating...with all these good reviews is what?
THE SAME STUFF AS THE SHOW
the entertainment!

lastly

what's been said about subtlety...
that bays weakness is that the subtext isn't clear as day?

sorry but since when does spelling it out make for a stronger story telling skills..
that kinda easy to see metaphor is for the early highschool books that teach kids to see and understand thematic story

if it's not easy for u to see the deeper meaning of things, that's ur weakness not the stories..
(ie at the time...i thought the matrix was cool...now I can write 3 essays about the subtext of that movie)

 

[Marvin]

reading eberts review and then reading this guys review

NY Daily News'

and then reading a g1 purists review

really makes u wonder what kinda position bays really in

sheesh how the hell is ebert(who i love by the way) going to say that smut about the climax and how it would be wise to cut it or what not
and then the other guy say it's pretty much what sells the movie...
and most non professional reviews clamoring over the action...yet saying that they need more pre action story

ie: "the movie stuggles when it's not in robot butt kicking mode"

then

"if only they tuned down the action and gave us more sam and his story...than this wouldn't be typical bay..."

it's just unfair...

 

[Marvin]

Still

That's 2 out of the 3 Relevant reviewers i've been wating for thus far

one more and its on

 

[Figs]

I have no problem if people don't see what I see in G1. What does bother me is when they trivialize and mock my interpretation and further conclude that the characters and story have no artistic merit or redeeming value because it was a cartoon made to sell something. thereby confusing the Hasbro execs with the imaginative artists who crafted the characters and mythos.

And my skepticism regarding Micheal Bay's treatment of the characters and story isn't just about accuracy but also about cheating the audience and fans by ignoring the reasons Transformers resonated in the first place so he could make an empty spectacle for a quick buck. I don't want too much lost in the translation. That may result in cheating people out of much that made it special in the first place.[/quote]

Once again, that doesn't go for everyone. Especially people who never watched the cartoon. It's only "cheating" you and a few others, on these boards at least. I just don't see how their mocking the show.....aside from looks of the characters a lot of people were saying there fairly accurate to the show in terms of personality. Like I said before, it should have had some more dialogue with Transformers since that seems to be the weak part according to a lot of fans.

 

[arty2]

I wouldn't call it negative so much as it's middle-of-the-road.

You're right. It's fixed.

 

[CFlash]

Once again, that doesn't go for everyone. Especially people who never watched the cartoon. It's only "cheating" you and a few others, on these boards at least. I just don't see how their mocking the show.....aside from looks of the characters a lot of people were saying there fairly accurate to the show in terms of personality. Like I said before, it should have had some more dialogue with Transformers since that seems to be the weak part according to a lot of fans.

IMO, replacing the original story with a magic box is cheating the audience. Other things like making Jazz a lil' guy cannon fodder instead of the 2nd in command is cheating the audience. Why not make the hottest hot-rod in the movie a conceited prick?... like Sunstreaker was. That's cheating the audience. Why cliche everything up?