2007 / 144 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Jason Jones

Well here we are. Another summer and another blatant attempt by Hollywood to tap into our collective nostalgia for a childhood long since past in order to make a quick buck (or a few hundred million of them anyway). Usually I don’t particularly care as it is typically something I could give less than a crap about like Dukes of Hazzard or The Cat in the Hat that finds itself being taken advantage of by the mad Hollywood marketing machine.

With Transformers it is different for me. This time its personal. When I was a kid I played with the toys, wtched the cartoons, and loved the animated movie that came out some twenty-odd years ago. Hell, I still love that movie! You can’t go wrong with Grimlock and company kicking butt. Some of the characters even die in it. Now that took balls! But I digress…

So anyway, when I first heard about this movie I was pissed and found myself even moreso when I found out Michael “I can make anything explode” Bay was at the helm. Originally there was hope when Robert Zemeckis was said to be at the reigns, but now nothing good could come of this enterprise.

Or so I thought…

Transformers is by no means a perfect film, but it does damn near everything a big budget summer movie should do. And it does it pretty well to boot. There’s the classic bad guys vs. good guys angle, the big explosions (this is a Michael Bay film after all), great special effects, nicely timed doses of humor , and just enough of a story to pass for a plot. These are the elements most summer films lack, or have in short supply these days, but thankfully that is not the case with this particular film.

So the plot goes something like this… There once was a planet called Cybertron where all the transformers lived. At some point war broke out between the Autobots (the good guys) and the Decepticons (the bad guys) and things really went downhill. At the heart of everything is an object known simply as The Cube. You can think of this thing as being a really cool Rubik’s Cube that is responsible for bringing electronic objects to life. This is what made the transformers what they are today, so I guess you could say its kind of important to them. At some point in the battle things go awry and The Cube is launched off into the distant reaches of space where, of course, it ends up on Earth. The transformers (good and bad) follow.

Of course The Cube is buried and difficult to find which results in each side seeking it out. This brings the human element into the story in the form of the U.S. military and a kid (Shia LaBeouf) who unbeknownst to him has the key to finding The Cube listed on eBay in the hopes of making enough money so he can buy a car. He unwittingly ends up buying a Chevy Camaro who turns out to be one of the Autobots (Bumblebee to be exact). Meanwhile the military is up to their gills in Decepticons who are trying to find The Cube by hacking into the military network. This leads to one of the weak parts of the movie that could have been excised saving 10 to 15 minutes of runtime and my sanity in the process.

The militray managed to pick up the signal of whatever it was that was hacking into their network, but can’t figure out what it is. So what do they do? They call in a bunch of kids who must be fresh off their high school graduation bender to find the answer. Now, I can appreciate that sometimes the military needs to bring in outside help, but this seems a tad absurd to me. Especially when, big shock here, the hot blonde chick is the one who manages to crack the code. This is made all the more unbelievable by the fact that she cracked it by copying it, taking it to a friend’s house (who appears to be in the midst of a hell of a game of Dance Dance Revolution), and having him decrypt and translate an alien language in under a minute. This ranks right up there with the Windows virus taking out the alien ship at the end of Independence Day in the realm of ultimate summer movie lameness to me. Why can’t Hollywood let this sort of nonsense go? There has to be a better way.

Anyway, back to the good stuff. Get this. The weapons the military uses against the Decepticons. You know. The ones that never work against alien technology in other movies (I’m looking at you War of the Worlds)? They actually cause damage here. Yes, you heard right. Man-made weapons actually are able to inflict damage and in some cases incapacitate alien technology. Now that is cool!

Also, unlike the original animated movie, there is a reason for the human characters to even be in the movie in the first place. In the animated movie they just got in the way and served no purpose whatsoever. Here they actually serve the plot (for the most part) and actually add to the enjoyment of the film. The military actually adapts to their enemy rather than just being mindless neanderthals as is the case in most summer blockbusters. The main female characters are actually useful which was refreshing. The aforementioned blonde does take a risk and get to the bottom of the situation even if it was a lame subplot. Also, the chick who Shia is in love with actually steps up and kicks some ass at one point. These women prove to be a little more than just the typical damsels in distress. Shia’s character has a history that ties back into the transformers time on Earth that is developed throughout the movie giving his character reason to exist. He did well in the role and actually showed a lot of range going from moments of humor to despair with ease. Perhaps there is something to all the talk about this guy.

The special effects are everything you could want out of a movie with gigantic robots in it. Very detailed, believable and gorgeous to look at. One bone to pick though is the fact that Bay chose to still film them as if they were human-sized, so virtually all of the shots of them transforming and many of the battle scenes are way too tight. He easily could have backed the camera up 30 or 40 feet and these shots would have turned out much better. Think of what King Kong would have looked like if the camera would have been about 5 times closer to Kong than it was. Then you get an idea of what much of Transformers looked like.

In the end the film could have been improved by taking out the hacker part and moving the camera back, but overall I was surprised by what I saw. Quite honestly I don’t think I could have asked for a better Transformers movie to be made. It did what it needed to do. It had funny bits like Bumblebee trying to help Shia woo a woman and a soldier trying to make a collect call from a warzone to lighten up the proceedings. There were a couple of instances of the original transforming sound from the cartoon sprinkled throughout and a lot of shit blew up. Plus, you even get to see the Secretary of Defense defend something for a change. How often does that happen?

Long story short there are a lot worse ways you could spend your entertainment dollars this summer and few better than spending it on a ticket to see Transformers.

And thankfully for those old Transformers fans such as myself they put in plenty of references to the cartoon for us geeks to pick out. Multiple references to “more than meets the eye” and the great line “one shall stand, one shall fall” were among the many that made me remember that somewhere deep inside me that little 10 year old kid lives on.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Jason's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.