Prattling before the Pratfall

Seeing it on opening day, I had relatively high expectations for the new live-action Transformers movie. Sure, I knew the changes from the source material were drastic, but I figured it could still be an enjoyable popcorn movie. Little did I know what horrors had been inflicted upon Optimus Prime and Megatron by Michael Bay and his cronies. Like the over-nourished kid you wouldn’t let handle your toys in kindergarten, Michael Bay has wrapped his presumably greasy hands around the legendary Transformers license and ripped out almost all its redeeming qualities, transforming (pun not intended) it into an amalgamation of every bad summer movie you’ve seen.

Transformers starts off at an American army base in Qatar, presumably because the writers figured Iraq was too risky. (more on this later) This sequence feels like the most generic war movie you’ve ever seen, and if you didn’t know what you were watching you would never guess that it was a film supposedly about big alien mecha. Soon afterwards you’re flung into a bad ripoff of Napoleon Dynamite, with unrealistically dorky kids and teachers and a Biff (Back to the Future) clone who thankfully doesn’t show up anywhere else. And in the tradition of stupid teen movies, there’s ridiculous and offensive racial stereotypes to be found, like a “loco” Hispanic and one of the most stupidly racist depictions of a fat black guy I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately the latter is a recurring comedy relief character. Throughout this whole segment, you’re thinking “Where are the robots?”, especially considering that the original animated series had very few human characters. This bad teen comedy sidetrack keeps popping in, as if trying to push the robots out of their own movie.

Well, the Transformers show up eventually. A used car bought by the one-dimensional kid protagonist turns out to be the righteous Autobot Bumblebee. He finds that thanks to his arctic explorer ancestor, he holds the key to the ultimate force in the universe in his great-great grandfather’s glasses(!) However, the plot is so horridly developed upon and shallow that I enjoyed it more by just turning my brain off and watching the CG models scrap. Now about the robots: they look amazing. I’m not the biggest fan of the new designs, Optimus’ flame decals, or the shameless plugs for GMC and Hummer on their vehicular forms, but you can tell a heck of a lot of work went into this movie’s CG budget. The non-existent robots blend convincingly into their existent surroundings, and the fight scenes are intense and spectacular. Along with Star Wars Ep. III and King Kong 2006, this is a good contender for best special effects in a movie ever. The problem is that the robots are upstaged by the far less interesting human characters time and time again, and boredom builds up like plaque on almost all the times there aren’t robots on the screen, thanks to the extremely low IQ of the writing and acting. We don’t see any mecha besides the two mentioned previously for quite some time.

There’s also an annoying Scrat (Ice Age)-like little robot who has way too much screen time, but I’d rather not talk about him.

After we see our first robot fight between Autobot Bumblebee and evil Decepticon Barricade, the movie becomes a blur of more robot fights and inane dribble. The problem is that almost all the fights are crammed into one very long sequence of mayhem that takes up at least a fourth of the over-2-and-a-half-hour long movie. This film should be the absolute criterion of how NOT to pace an action movie: there is absolutely no balance between the spectacular fights and the quieter comedy and “plotting.” Several tense scenes are ruined by that fat black stereotype popping out of nowhere. The “climax” is unsatisfying, extremely confusing, and far too abrupt. Thankfully, the original Transformers theme is heard at the end of the credits, but it’s so heavily remixed you can barely tell.

Being a stupid summer movie, Transformers is loaded with tired, crass jokes and stereotypes that we all got way too much of in Scary Movie’s countless sequels. There’s even potty humor. But the most offensive thing of all is the overload of US Army screen time, which is so pervasive you wonder how much funding this movie got from the Army. There are many panning shots of army vehicles and of “heroic” soldiers that look ripped right out of an “ARMY OF ONE” ad. Why, oh why did an originally kiddie Japanese robot saga have to turn into another piece of sly US Army propaganda? Some parting words from Optimus include “sacrifices must be made for victory,” which would serve as a good slogan for any pro-Iraq War campaign. But in sort of a contradictory message, we also see the one truly funny scene in the movie: a flawless Bush impersonator asking an attendant on Air Force One to “wrangle me up some Ding-Dongs.”

If these robots were once Japanese, you can never tell. This movie is steeped in the obnoxious, low-IQ modern American teen “culture,” as well as the US government itself, as I’m sure you’ve gleaned by now. Like a Shrek movie, there are far too many tongue-in-cheek pop culture references for anyone, but thankfully they never go completely overboard. This movie must average at least one product placement a minute. Everyone wants a piece of the marketing pie: Panasonic, Xbox 360, Mountain Dew, HP, even the punk-metal band Misfits, they’re all in plain sight, practically grabbing at your wallet. It’s definitely a reflection on our culture.

With a director like Michael Bay, I guess I set my expectations far too high for this movie. I’d say the main problem with it, summarized, is that it can’t decide whether to be a dumb summer teen comedy or a semi-serious CG spectacle. I would certainly NOT recommend this to any real Transformers fan (which I’m not), they’ll be even more infuriated then myself. But if you actually enjoy these kinds of movies, give it a shot. Just don’t forget what you’re watching.

I feel required to give this a 1.5/4 star rating. Keep in mind that extra half star is only for special effects. Even the ultra-mediocre Superman Returns was a better movie than this.

Eric