The Transforming Robots

It's a movie about giant fighting robots. If you don't want to see giant robots fight, don't go see it. If you think that giant fighting robots are cool, go see it. Don't go see it if you're going to sit in the theater and roll your eyes at how unintellectual it is. There's a different kind of artistry present in a Michael Bay film, and if you can't see it then you've barricaded yourself in your fortress of pseudo-intellectual bullshit and you're not a real cinephile.

That doesn't mean that the movie can't be eviscerated, it just means it shouldn't be eviscerated for being about giant fighting robots. However, I COULD say that there's no reason, no reason on Hell or Earth, that a movie about giant fighting robots should be two and a half hours. This should be an hour and a half, two hours maximum, of robots fighting. Minimal exposition. Just robots knocking the Christ out of each other. Blowing up wonders of the world. Robots floating in space. Megan Fox standing around.

On the contrary, there's a dickload of story, and most of it seems like it was the work of a dying 8-year-old, desperately transcribing his last hallucinations as he slips away to the great parking garage in the sky.

If I can recount the plot, I'll probably be able to secure a job as an archivist. Some robots are killing eachother, the All-Spark, which I can't remember shit about from the first film, brings robots to life, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is going to model school or something and robots show up and blow the Christ out of the school. Then Sam has to go find some key thing that will bring back the key to destroying the Fallen, a giant fighting robot that's even more giant than the rest of the giant fighting robots and who wants to eat our sun (?) and blow up the seven wonders of the world (Go figure. Give Michael Bay one of the seven wonders of the world and all he wants to do is blow it up.). Sam stands around playing little-to-no role in the robot war except drooling while giant robots expound upon the origins of Robotopilis, essentially dragging the audience kicking and screaming through a million billion hours of exposition. That's honestly the best I can do to try and recount the plot.

When the giant robots fight, it's a fine summer action movie with lots of money put on the screen and some marvelous CGI to look at, and Michael Bay really knows how to stage a ginormous action scene. What Michael Bay DOESN'T know is how to craft a story, or let his directorial hand guide the narrative and hold together the parts that don't have the robots clobbering each other. Among other things.

But when I go to a movie about giant fighting robots, I want $10 worth of giant fighting motherfucking robots. The rest of it's window dressing and I want as little of it to get in the way of my giant fighting robots as possible. If the screenwriters can come up with a great screenplay with compelling characters and an exciting conflict, I would love nothing more, but I'm not going to require it of them. What I will require is plenty of giant fighting robots.

And maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just crazy. There's enough giant fighting robot action to make for a good hour-and-a-half film, just like it should be, but for a two-and-a-half hour film, there are too many passages of robots sitting around blathering on about the All-Spark or the Matrix of Friendship or something, and it never escaped me how much money was being spent on robots droning on instead of murdering each other.

Especially the finale. The finale is appropriately gigantic, but there's a good hour free of robots beating the mittens out of each other before we get the finale, and Michael Bay seems to think he needs to whet my appetite with those boring, stupid, underdeveloped soldier characters shooting at the robots before we get robots decapitating each other. At that point I was really hungry and just wanted to go home. My good will had been spent and the sweet rewards of robots impaling each other had been far too much work to get to.

I will say this in defense of the film, when the robots fight at the beginning, it's certainly entertaining. But when the robots fight in the middle of the film, in a balls-to-the-walls brilliant fight scene in a forest, it's everything I could have ever wanted from a movie about giant robots with deep, ideological differences. It's beautifully choreographed, magnificently rendered, perfectly framed and edited. Shia LaBeouf gets to do something truly dynamic, even if he is just being thrown around by the robots. That one scene was enough for me to justify my purchase of the ticket. For a moment I forgot about all the problems with the movie and just focused on the action on screen, completely absorbed.

As for the acting, I have little to say aside from Megan Fox is hot, and Shia LaBeouf gets to kiss her, even if he is a little goofy looking. They don't do much else. On the other side, John Turturro is one of my favorite actors. I know he hasn't been trying very hard recently, and I'm glad to see that most people will at least recognize his face after this, but does it have to be such a useless role? He was the only thing in You Don't Mess With the Zohan that made that movie worth seeing, but here, although he isn't exactly sleepwalking, he fails to even make an impression.

So let me reiterate. If you like giant fighting robots, this is worth your time. They're giant, they're robotic, and they're fighting. Feel free to nap through the bits of the film with the giant talking robots, though.

6/10


EDIT:: The more I think about it, the more I can't shake the feeling that I was far too kind to this film. By the time I had left the theater, I had forgotten all about the awful humor in the film that wasn't present at the end. It was oppressive and insulting to listen to, not to mention I only REALLY recommended one scene out of an entire film, which isn't a great batting average. There's no way this is a 6/10 film, despite the appealing novelty of giant fighting robots, I feel like I was far too generous. I don't relish giving out negative reviews, but I feel like this film really deserves it.

3/10