Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Transformers

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I remember next to nothing about the Transformers cartoon. Obviously they are both more than meets the eye and robots in disguise but everyone knows that. Let’s see; after Autobots and Decepticons plus Optimus Prime and Megatron I have no idea what the cartoon was about. So for me Transformers was just the latest Michael Bay movie and there is only so many pixie stix I can eat in one sitting.

Sometimes I wonder if Michael Bay is just screwing with me. All of his movies look, feel, taste, and any other sense you want to include exactly the same. Look, I am not saying that the man is anywhere near the bottom of the directing barrel. Mr. Bay can shoot the hell out of stuff blowing up and vehicles of any sort going really fast. What does that mean for Transformers? Well, it is very purdy. Everything is bright and shiny with the majority of it shot in broad daylight so there was no hiding the robots in the shadows. But that is the best part Transformers … it was pretty on the outside and completely empty on the inside. Don’t get me wrong the cast tries real hard but in the absence of a decent story there are bad jokes and the actors and actresses working really hard to keep this thing above water. The first name to bring up is Shia LaBeouf and all this instantaneous hype over him is almost deserved, which is amazing. I’ve been a fan since Even Stevens but I was also a fan of a young Mario Lopez and Keshia Knight Pulliam so what the hell do I know. Bringing it back to Shia, he is working his ass off trying to make this sub par material work. You have embarrassing eBay names, masturbation jokes, and 20-foot tall robots hiding in his back yard, just real childish shit. That’s not even bringing up John Tuturro’s unexplainable performance, an Autobot “peeing” on Tuturro, and that stupid mini-Decepticon being both cute and evil. There is just way too much bottom feeding humor. Now before there is any confusion, Anthony Anderson should not be tainted by the rest of the humor in this movie. He delivers as usual with his spiel about why he is eating the donuts in the interrogation room. Also applause for the casting of 2 hot females, one who is way way way too old looking to be in high school and another who is takes her place in a long line of way too sexy computer hackers … casting is the best job ever. It is amusing that I have gone this far without even writing about the Transformers themselves. Although I will admit that they were pretty to look at, there were things that just made the robots feel a bit off. Even with all the advances in technology, the Transformers still stick out as obviously computer generated. Maybe I just wanted them to build real robots. My other annoyance with the movie Transformers was that each of them had too much going on visually and once again maybe I just prefer the blocky cartoon versions. Still the voices were fun, well at least when they weren’t saying stupid shit like “my bad”. So overall the whole damn thing was a good looking mixed bag.


Since Transformers was a big deal and made big money, my only hope is that this leads to more live action movies based on the cartoons I grew up with. And now I will list my top five most wanted; M.A.S.K., Voltron, non-Dolph Lundgren He-Man, Smurfs, Thundercats, and an honorable mention to the entire Disney Afternoon. As for Transformers, it was exactly what you would expect from a Michael Bay movie. If you were hoping for something else take a look in the mirror and figure out where you went wrong in life.

6 out of 10

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