What can you even say about a Transformers movie? “It’s there” is about the nicest thing. Michael Bay is such a special needs director that you feel like giving him a passing grade just for turning in a movie on time (his signature 4th of July slot) and letting him finally graduate so you don’t have to keep him in your class anymore. But this Transformers movie–despite some suspiciously decent reviews–is no better than the first two movies. In fact it might be worse since the first two movies didn’t have Frances McDormand and John Malcovich and watching these two actors wasted in “paycheck roles” is depressing.
What Works: Shia LeBouf is as good in these movies as anyone possibly could be (although it helps that he’s surrounded by Tyrese, that guy who’s married to Fergie, Victoria’s Secret models with no other acting experience, and robots…shit, Martin Lawrence would shine in similar circumstances) and infuses certain scenes with whacked out, surprising energy that jolts you out of the routine of seeing Robot A wham on Robot B. He comes the closest to creating a character in a Michael Bay movie since Nicholas Cage flipped out in The Rock.
What Doesn’t Work: Rosie Huntington as the love interest is no worse than Megan Fox (I might actually prefer her since Fox has such a battery acid dimwit cynicism she’s no longer cute) but she LOOKS like she’s in a commercial instead of a movie. She literally looks CGI, an airbrushed figment of our imagination plucked out of a Victoria’s Secret commercial or Michael Bay’s wet dreams. The whole movie seems more like a trailer than an actual movie, complete with unintentionally hilarious shots of the character getting out of their cars in slow motion…many, many of these shots.
In fact, that’s really the movie’s entire problem: familiarity. We have seen everything that’s in this movie before. Robot A smashes on Robot B, Robot B tricks humans, Robot A is in a trap but pulls out a victory at the last second, there is some terribly important device that no one is able to satisfactorily explain what it does, and Shia makes time for his parents who are in this movie for no good reason other than they were in the last two. By the time the human government–once again–tried to make a deal with the Decepticons and cast aside its only allies the Autobots I rolled my eyes into the seat two rows behind me. “How many times are we gonna see the same fucking mistake? The bad guys are literally called The Decepticons. They WILL deceive you…it’s in their name.”–I think my reaction went something along those lines.
What I Would Have Done Differently: One Transformers movie is plenty. Of course, the box office doesn’t let movies die when there’s still another dollar to be made so if I were going to have this movie: No more Michael Bay, we know what his Transformers looks like, we’ve seen it twice already, and change is good. Every time the Bond films get stale the best way to fix it is a new director. Also there’s no point having the movie be a butt numbing two hours and thirty five minutes…that length should be reserved for great blockbusters like The Dark Knight not the 300th fight between two robots. Skip all the convoluted plot (an unnecessary fixture of the franchise that no fan is paying to see) and just get into a one sentence reason for the robots to start duking it out (something like “That robot slept with the other one’s mother…now let’s level the city when they battle!”) so we can be out of there and on with our lives after 95 minutes.