Ah, to be a kid again. Well, at least to be at the age I was when I first fell in love with the original animated series of Transformers. I loved that show, grew up with, even collected all the toys I could get my little hands on. So when they announced plans for a live action film for the summer of '07 you can only imagine how delighted I was. Then they announced it would be directed by Michael Bay and Produced by Steven Speilberg, slight doubt managed to creep it's way into my mind at that point. But now that the movie is actually out, and i've gotten a chance to see it, I retract my doubt 100%.
Let's face it, everyone knows what the transformers are by this point. They're alien robots who can turn into cars, planes, boats, ect. and then back into robots and then kick the shit out of each other. Well, that's the perfect idea for a movie if there ever was one. So as a fan of the original series and the classic 1986 animated film, my opinion may seem a little biased. Well trust me, even if there si sokme bias it's very minimal because I review these films with an open mind to all their flaws. Even some of my favorite films have gotten put down(just read some of my previous reviews), so my bias is almost none.
Plot: If you didn't know it yet, there actually is a story to this film. That's right, there's a plot-line and characters. It's not just robots kickin' the crap out fo one another for a few hours. The plot is pretty simple. The transformers are a race of bio-mechanical beings from the planet Cybertron. They're devided into two warring factions: The Autobots, led by Optimus Prime and the Decepticons, led by bad-ass extrodanare Megatron. The transformers get all their life from this supercomputer like object called the allspark, thus why they're fighting. So the allspark is hurled into space, lost to both sides. So both sides send troops to find it. The allspark crashlands on Earth, and Megatron si the first to find out. That's millions upon millions of years ago, so fast foward to the year 2007 or so and the story picks up. Sam Witwicky is a highschool kid who goes out to buy his first car. He picks himself up a yellow 1978 Chevy Camero, which turns out to be the Autobot soldier named Bumblebee. Bumblebee sends out a signal to the other transformers around to let them know he's found the location of the allspark, and soon several asteroids crash into the Earth. These turn out to be several more transformers. Soon Sam, Mikaela(the girl of his dreams) and the Autobots now on Earth have to locate the allspark and stop the Decepticons before they can use it. But the government has stepped in, and some crazy secrets are about to be reveiled.
So, how does the acting stack up? Actually very well. Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox play Sam and Mikaela very well, giving the story some humanity. Shia does a great job between frightened teen, bumbling lovestruck fool, and eventually a hero he never knew he could be. Although Mikaela isn't really fleshed out nearly as much, she's still a good character to have around to balance out the testosterone flying around. She's mostly just eye candy in this one though, although as a guy I can't really say that's a bad thing. This film could have very well done without Tyrese Gibson yelling "Bring it!" at a giant robot scorpion, and frankly some of the humor in the film seemed forced. Many of the jokes are actually well played out(like a giant robot peeing on a guy), but most just seem like filler.
As for the transformers themselves, bad-ass is all that comes to mind. The voice acting is better than I could ahve expected. The great Peter Cullen reprises his role as Optimus Prime, a role he hasn't done since the original TV show ended back in the late 1980's. Frank Welker, however, doesn't come back to play Megatron. So who do you replace him with? Hugo Weaving, and dear god there isn't a more evil voice around I think. Megatron's voice is deep and bellowing, almsot satanic in it's growl. I don't think the devil could have done a better job with it. The other transformers are also equally voiced well, expecially Barricade. He may only talk once, but if you were in Sam's shoes you'd most likely shit yourself(minus the fact a cop car jsut turned into a giant robot and tried to kill you).
Many people have complained about the new designs of the transformer characters, but those people are morons. The characters look much more organic, less boxy. Optimus Prime with hot-rob flames is just too cool, and I still wonder if i'm cool enough to have been worthy to lay eyes on him. Many of the characters got some pretty extreme facelifts for the film. Starscream is now the small F-22 Raptor combat jet, so there's not a lot to work with. He looks like a primate crossbred with a bird of some kind in his robot form, with large shoulders and bird-like legs. But he's still menacing none-the-less. Bumblebee, hoever, got the best makeover. He's no long a lame-ass VW bug, but a 1978/2008 Camero. Several reasons are to play for this. A) VW refuses to have any of their products depicted as war machines since they did build cars, tanks, planes, and other assorted wepaons for the Nazi's during WW2 and the German people beleive they can erase history. B) Michael Bay said there's no room in his films for a bug, and wanted no connection between his films and Herbie the love bug. C) VW Bug = suck-ass, Camero = bad-ass. But he none the less looks awesome.
So a lot of people are wondering "It's Michael Bay, how can he screw this one up?" Actually, he didn't. He did an aweosme job translating a kids toy from the 80's into a bad-ass super thrill ride for 2007. Other than some slow moments, and forced jokes he did a great job. Besides, people have got to quit being so harsh on the guy.
The soundtrack, on the other ahnd, is my biggest complaint. The score by Lorne Balfe is good, but the main soundtrack is just terrible. Follwoing the same idea as Spiderman they took the most popular(and by crazy coincidence most terrible) alt-rock music they could find and mixed it it. I'm sorry folks, anything by Linkin Park after 2001 just sucks. If they had ditched the crap-n-roll soundtrack they woulda' been fine, but they had to try for the same thing as everyone else.
So, think my opinion is still too biased? Ok, go ask my buddy Greg. He never even watched the cartoon and still thought it was an awesome movie(although i'm not sure if he'll put up his review anytime soon).
So, how does this film fare? I gotta' say, I was blown away. I expected good things from this movie, but they took what i expected and replaced it with something even better. Other than some slow scenes, some forced humor, a few poor casting choices(Mr. Gibson, i'm lookin' at you), and a rather shitty soundtrack of mordern "rock"; this movie is awesome. Take those things into account and it's still not enough to drop this movie from a must see.