The Toys That Begat a Cartoon, That Begat A Movie Lands on Earth
Written: Jul 03 '07 (Updated Jul 05 '07)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Bang For The Buck |
 |
|
|
Pros: Fast Paced, lots of action…
Cons: No character development; cliches and stereotypes abound.
The Bottom Line: This live action version is a fitting follow-on to the cartoon.
|
|
|
| vemartin's Full Review: Transformers |
Let me preface this review by stating that I do not usually go to movies premieres, but I had the day off, and a review to pen, so…Transformers, they were not around when I was growing up but I being a cartoon buff, I remember well the animated series I used to watch in my twenties in the eighties. The carton was hit and miss and hard to catch on television, but the story is as old as human kind: good (The Autobots led by Optimus Prime) versus evil (The Decepticons led by Megatron), only the combatants are robots that can transform into cars, trucks, helicopters, jet aircraft, or anything else they wanted to. All they had to do is scan the object and become it instantly.
Directed by Michael Bay (The Rock, Armageddon, The Island) the live action version of Transformers is about what you’d expect from a Michael Bay film. There are explosions—lots of explosions, tracer fire and lots of military hardware—but not much character development. How could there be given the fast pace of the movie.
The Story-line
The Transformers (good and evil) have been watching Earth for quite some time, and some have been living on the planet for years soaking up little nuggets of human culture to call their own. They are in search of a cube called the Allspark that is the origin of live on their home plant Cybertron. The Allspark was lost during one of the robots many wars. The Allspark causes any machinery it touches to become sentient and transform into something. The Decepticons want the Allspark so that they can dominate the known Universe; the Autobots want to stop them.
While chasing after the Allspark the leader of the Decepticons, Megatron crashes into the Arctic, plunges in the ice and freezes, where he is unearthed by the great grandfather of our principle character, one Sam Witwicky portrayed by Shia LaBeouf (Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Even Stevens, Constantine). The location of the Allspark is imprinted on grandfather’s glasses after he inadvertently activated the frozen Megatron’s navigation device. Sam now has the glasses, which he tries to sell on e-Bay, thus attracting the attention of the robots on both sides.
Sam, the nerdy but clever non-jock (cliche) is joined by Mikaela portrayed by Megan Fox (Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, The Help, Hope & Faith), the beautiful arm accessory of the school quarterback (cliche). Mikaela, who has a record and wonders why she consent to be the arm accessory of the dim-witted (cliche) quarterback, eventually dumps him and hangs with Sam.
Meanwhile and Autobot disguised as a Chevy (2008) Camaro is send to protect young Sam, and the Decepticons attack a military outpost in Qatar in an effort to gain access to the Pentagon’s mainframe and learn the location of the Allspark. They are met by a Special Forces team led by Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel – Las Vegas, All My Children) and Tech Sergeant Epps (Tyrese Gibson – Baby Boy, 2 fast 2 Furious, Four Brothers), both of which have nine lives. Let the mayhem begin!
My Thoughts
There are major plot holes, and cliques in Mr. Bay's Transformers. For instance the robots are supposedly made inert by extreme cold, but isn’t it very, very cold in space where they came from? The eye glasses are supposed to foretell the location of the Allspark, but the glasses were imprinted at the turn of the 20th century and the Hoover Administrative moved the cube, how are they relevant to the story? All of the Black American characters in this movie are cliques which in light of Don Imus' dismissal is quite surprising.
For instance, Bernie Mack’s used car salesman, Bobby, refers to his mother as "Mammy," at which point she gives him the finger, and he responds by saying that "If I had a rock, I'd bust your head, b_tch." Anthony Anderson's character, Glen the computer genius, isn't much better; he is depicted berating his grandmother time and again a scene no doubt included for nothing more than comic relief. But why does that comic relief always come at Black Americans expense? As a Black American male I find these continued stereotypes and trite cliques troubling and emblematic of how far we still need to go to improve race relations in this country, but undoubtedly Transformers was completed before the Imus debacle so...
The movie also lacks coherence, jumping from scene to scene without much glue to hold it all together. Nonetheless I found Transformers entertaining if not a wholly fulfilling or intelligent; it must be the boy in me battling the adult. Once the action begins it hard to tell the good bots from the bad, but the action is signature Michael Bay with plenty of pyrotechnics to satisfy any lover of things going boom. And speaking of the robots, the special effect gurus did an excellent job putting together the Transformers in all of their mechanized glory.
Boys of all ages will no doubt eat this movie up, while girls, well it’s really not for them unless of course they like the Transformers, "Robots in Disguise, Transformers, More Than Meets the Eye" indeed.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Action Movie
Viewing Method: Studio Screening/Premiere
Film Completeness: A few glitches, but mostly complete.
Worst Part of this Film: Script
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
vemartin
|
 - Top 50 |
|
Member: Vincent
Location: Aurora, IL
Reviews written: 1371
Trusted by: 549 members
About Me:
...A Great Empire cannot be Conquered from Without until it first Destroys itself From Within...
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.