Movie Review: "Transformers"

My expectations for this film were low, and they were met. Actually, Transformers exceeded my expectations, such as they were. The action sequences were bad-ass. I expected that. There were lots of really cool explosions. The CGI was awesome, so the robots looked really good, as the film did generally. I was expecting that. I also expected some silly imagery in the visual scheme of the film. Stuff like pilots running in slow-motion towards waiting jets with a hazy sky and a setting sun in the background, followed by close-ups shot from below of the jets swooping in between two office buildings. This is usually interspersed with a besieged authority figure (in this case, an underwhelming Jon Voigt as the secretary of defense) declaiming inspirationally. Mitchell Amundsen, the director of photography, worked on The Island, MI:III, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon and Bad Boys II, so he knows exactly what this sort of movie is supposed to look like.

Another thing I was expecting was a really weak script, one that was derivative, devoid of inspiration or innovation, and shot through with bad dialogue and cliches. Check. This was established with an implausible conversation among some soldiers right at the start of the movie. Some of the stuff in here is really absurd: "the NSA’s recruiting right out of high school now," someone remarks before we first meet a "signals analyst" who happens to not only be blonde and hot but also has a thick Tasmanian accent for some reason. What? (Observant D.C. residents will notice that after she leaves the Pentagon she then hails a cab at M Street & Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, which takes her to a house that is clearly in Southern California.) The Men in Black are here rendered as "Sector 7," a super-secret government organization (sure) founded by Herbert Hoover (uh-huh) that guards ancient alien technology (why not?) hidden far beneath the bowels of the Hoover Dam (yeah, right) using it to reverse-engineer the microchip and airplanes (as if). Of course, rather than having all of this revealed a little bit at a time, it spews forth in a blast of exposition two-thirds of the way into the film. It takes a while to get going. And it's too long.

Seriously, I do not understand how screenplays this poor get made into movies! It is not that hard to write an action movie with soul, one that combines believable characters with white-knuckled excitement. It is not so difficult to craft an adrenaline-pumping thrill ride that has sincere, affecting emotion, rather than pseudo-macho posturing and love stories as shallow as a kiddie pool. We need not sacrifice all substance for style.

That said, they did get some pretty good actors for this film. Josh Duhamel acquits himself capably as an army captain, and Megan Fox is not only a serious vixen, she makes the love interest three-dimensional and likeable. Anthony Anderson is underused, and makes the most of the poor lines that stereotype his character as a nerd, a coward and a glutton. That character is also a Redskins fan, which is pretty cool. He wears a Portis jersey throughout the film, so at least they got that right.

It’s kind of weird, when you first think about it, that Shia LaBeouf (best know for the Disney tween sitcom Even Stevens) is cast as the lead in a movie that cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars. But someone asked me yesterday if it was appopriate for children, and I replied, "well, it was made for adolescent boys." When you consider it from that aspect it totally makes sense to have an 11th grade protagonist. And Shia "Ou est" LaBeouf is pretty much perfect for the role. He’s not one of the cool kids, but neither is he a complete dork. He’s endearing and confident. The teenage boys who come to see this film will find it very easy to identify with and cheer for him. And, admittedly, he does get some pretty choice lines. To be fair, the script does have some funny parts to it. But perhaps not quite as many as there are parts that are unintentionally funny.

Transformers reminded me, more than anything else, of Team America. This is not surprising, considering the homies from South Park were parodying the whole ouevre of Messrs. Bay and Bruckheimer (who was not involved with this movie, although apparently Steven Spielberg was - if so, he didn’t exert nearly enough artistic guidance). This is especially true in a scene where fancy fighter planes blow the living crap out of a villlage located in "Qatar - The Middle East" with little regard for the locals or the American soldiers hanging about. Aside from the robots, anything you see in Transformers you probably saw in Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, The Rock, or Bad Boys. Perhaps I’m judging this film and those who made it too harshly. Movies like this are like twinkies, they’re filling but there’s no nutritional value, and that’s sort of the point. They’re called "popcorn movies" for a reason. Sometimes all you want is some slick photography, some hot babes, and some ass-kicking action sequences. I’m sorry if I sound like a crank. But this is the kind of action movie that gives action movies a bad name. There are filmmakers out there (James Cameron and Tony Scott come to mind) who prove it’s possible to make awesome action movies that have a heart. So I don’t really see the point in making one like this when you could make one like that.