Transformers (Bay, 2007) - 6/10
Well, I have now seen this year's most highly touted blockbuster, and guess what? It is a Michael Bay movie, through and through. All the positive and (mostly) negative things that come with a Bay production are all present and accounted for here. The over-saturated look to the film? Check. The slow-motion money shots? Check. The abundance of cheese? Check. The now-imfamous Bay tracking shot circling a character? Check. A 90 minute movie stretched into something an hour longer? Check.
Now, not everything that is wrong with the movie is Bay's fault. In fact, I had fewer issues with the Bay-isms than I did with the overwhelming stupidity of the movie itself (although I did feel that the this was Bay's worst edited movie; there is a usual slickness to his movies that I didn't find here). In short, I guess I am blaming the source material for a lot of the issues, as crazy as that sounds. Giant robots who can shift into a variety of highly-pimped GM vehicles come to earth to fight over a MacGuffin, er, a giant cube? One which just happens to be located under the Hoover Dam, along with the Darth Vader of robots? Said robots who are advanced enough to bring down the defence network in less than a minute, yet can't stop a teenage boy? One of my most hated cliches is "just turn you brain off and enjoy it". What? Blockbusters can be plenty entertaining without treating the audience like idiots, thank you very much.
I didn't hate everything, as evidence by my passing score. Just pretty much the entire screenplay, some of Bay's usual wankery, the editing, the bland musical score, and a good chunk of the acting. Alright, that does make it sound like I hated everything, but really, there was a fair bit to enjoy here. As much as many, myself included, rag on Bay, he really knows how to shoot an action scene. Bay as usual is at his best when the shit hits the fan. The movie contained several of the most exciting action scenes in recent memory, so kudos to Bay and the effects team there. The CG in the movie is spectacular, and possibly the very best ever up to this moment in time. I really dug the look of the Autobots and how real they looked when they shifted shapes (my only gripe is that Prime and Bumblebee aside, most of the other 'bots were pretty generic looking, and often hard to tell apart).
The best parts of the movie were threefold: Shia LaBeouf, the humor, and the Spielberg-ian first hour of the movie. I am starting to see why LaBeouf is becoming the next big star in Hollywood. He has that every-man look to him, so we identify with him, and he has really strong comedic skills. Speaking of comedy, the biggest and best surprise for me was how funny the movie was in certain scenes (namely the scene in Sam's house with the Autobots outdoors, and anything Sam's hilarious mother said). Those scenes in particular, along with the nice relationships between Sam and his dad, and Sam and Bumblebee, felt straight out of a Spielberg Transformers movie (had he ever made one), and I really liked that. Perhaps if Spielberg had directed, then the film would have had soul, something which the final Bay product lacked. In fact, that is a nice way to sum up Tranformers: pretty, funny, but shallow and ultimately soulless. Don't go out of your way to see it, but at the same time, don't pass it up if the opportunity arises to catch it.
