Transformers is probably the worst movie I've seen in a theatre since The Phantom Menace.
The movie looks very nice. The CG is top notch (aside from the sketchy looking Mars Rover sequence). Buildings break nicely and carnage is generally handled well. I have no idea when CG was used in destruction--most of it looks pretty organic, but if it was, this movie would have had double the budget it actually has. Good stuff out of the way, two things hold the look of the movie back: the designs of the Transformers and Michael Bay. Aside from Optimus Prime an Bumblebee, the Transformers look too similar. I mean, they look different enough when they are standing around and yapping, but the action sequences that require 2 or more bodies are disastrous. All the bots that aren't Opt or BB are grey or dark blue. That's bad. As far as the Michael Bay factor goes, well. . .the movie has its fair share of action scenes, but none of them are very involving or interesting. I don't want to be overly harsh and call them sterile or anything, but they just didn't pull me in or hold my interest. Bay's schizo camera work is in full effect, too, with puzzling use of slow motion and badly cut close-up action.
Then the plot. Oh god the plot. You'd think with a 150 million dollar budget, the script must be at least decent, right? Well, no. This sucker's got holes so big that Optimus Prime could probably fit through them. . .after having a Miles-esque BK Eat Attack. The most puzzling ones have to do with the glasses of the explorer. This plot device is so poorly thought out that there are multiple holes attached to it. Let's break it down:
1. When the explorer accidentally activated Megatron (just for a second), how did Megatron instantly know to burn a map onto the dude's glasses? I mean, for being awake for a scant few seconds, that is a ridiculously precise thing to do. Why would Megatron even want to make a map to the thing, giving awake the location of the object he planned to use for TEH BADNESS?
2. How did any of the other Transformers even find out about the glasses? Megatron went right back to sleep. Optimus says they learned about the glasses from Ebay, which makes zero sense. How would they be able to tell the map was on the glasses via an Ebay screenshot, and even if they could see the map, why didn't they just use the screenshot to figure out the map?
There are other problems. It is pointed out that Megatron was moved from the arctic circle to the Hoover Dam in the 30s. A point is also made that he is in stasis from being frozen. How did they transport something so giant from the arctic circle to the Hoover Dam while keeping it frozen? Similarly, how did they move the allspark at all? Why did Sector 7 decide to build their top secret super base in a famous tourist destination? If the US had a power source that could turn any electronics into violent, gun-laden robots, why didn't we just drop a giant box of calculator killbots on top of Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq? How did the Decepticons know about Sector 7, and more specifically, the Iceman project?
And for such a lengthy movie, so much of the material is just blatantly unnecessary, and should have been trimmed for length. For example, the NSA sigint chick with the ACCENT THAT CHANGES EVERY OTHER SCENE, why was she in the movie at all. She, and everything surrounding her subplot (yes, that means most of the government stuff), could have been cut out, and the movie would have been a good 20 minutes shorter, and not lost a thing. I can understand if that stuff was thrown in to pad a short movie, but this movie is horrendously long to begin with.
Also, people in the Transformers universe appear to have difficulty identifying anthropomorphic robots. The Autobots dancing around Shia's house? Lame. The robot dancing around the airstrip that Airforce One has landed on due to an emergency? Lame. Nobody noticed a man-sized robot jogging across the strip that the most important plane on earth has just landed on?
I'm going to cut my bitching off here--believe me, I could go on--but I would like to say my thang on the acting. Shia does the best job here. John Turturro delivers a hammy, career worst performance (no exaggeration), and John Voight doesn't do much better. Pointless Accent Changing NSA Chick is also absolutely horrible. I have no idea who she is, but her schtick was so lame that it's worth calling out.
I like big dumb action movies as much as the next guy, but this movie delivers on no level. None at all. Except the nice CG. And that desert shootout with the underground bot was done pretty well, too.
Avoid absolutely.
