Transformers

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

This would be the Michael Bay Transformers, not the 80's cartoon movie.

I'm not sure if this means that I have bad taste, but I enjoy Michael Bay. The Rock and Bad Boys II are two of the best fucking action movies ever made, plain and simple. Transformers is not close to their level, but I do enjoy it. I liked it back when I saw it in theaters, and maybe I liked it slightly more this time. Dunno.

Michael Bay is both the best and worst thing that happened to this movie. His action kicks ass, the movie looks fucking great, he knows how to make a goofy movie but keep a straight face doing it, and he knows how to make special effects fun. (I am not usually one to praise big special effects in movies, especially CG. The best special effects in the world don't mean dick if they aren't used to create a good film. But I have to say it, the effects in Transformers are actually fun to watch all by themselves, and would be fun even if the rest of the movie sucked). Better yet, and maybe something I wasn't expecting from Bay, is how fun all the scenes with Shia LaBeouf are. He captures a lot of the wonder, and excitement, and humor of being a teenager with a robot car. It's not a realistic portrait of teenage life, but it's a great fantasy. I'm assuming some of the credit is due to Spielberg's influence, and a lot to LaBeouf himself, but still. Kudos.

But then there's all the stock Michael Bay stuff that keeps Transformers from being a great action movie. Namely, all the shit involving the military or the government or scientists. I don't know why Bay loves guys in suits sitting in control rooms barking orders, but boy does he ever. He loves people spewing a lot of meaningless technical jargon, and bureaucrats getting into pissing competitions, and computer nerds trying to say shit that sounds smart, and army guys blowing shit up.

I think maybe Bay put all this crap in the movie to make it seem more plausible. Like, he really wants to imagine how the government or military would react to robots from space. And I guess maybe he thinks that makes it seem more epic, and makes the stakes seem greater, I'm not sure. But it really sucks ass. Bay has this great, goofy story about giant fucking robots that turn into cars and fight, and he has a charismatic teenage kid that we can identify with along for the ride. Oh, and in case that's not enough, we have a hot girl to look at. That is enough awesomeness to sustain a feature film. Every time Jon Voigt shows up to bark orders at computer nerds, or some government agent drops the phrase "non-biological extraterrestrial" to I guess make the silly as story sound more believable, the movie is fucking boring.

I do have one other complaint, and it's about the All Spark. It's the coolest idea in the movie, and they completely under use it. We get to see it turn a cell phone, an XBox, an SUV and a Mountain Dew machine into killer robots, and holy shit that fucking rocks. But that's all we get to see. It's maybe about 1 minute worth of the film. I don't know about you, but I could watch a 90 minute film about innocuous electronic devices turning into missile shooting robots. The tiny cellphone robot shooting tiny missiles is the best part of the whole fucking movie. If they do part 2, I want more All Spark.

Okay, that's enough of this. Bottom line: the good stuff outweighs the bad. Transformers is good fun.