Take me now, Lord, for I have joined a salacious group of brethrens; a commune reserved for those who adore the cinema of Michael Bay. I enjoyed the holiest heck out of Transformers, and I fear that my fate is sealed. I have found the first Michael Bay movie that I consider “rockin’.”
Look, it’s not that I consciously reject the guy’s work. The Rock and the first Bad Boys were good stupid fun, short and sweet. But Bay’s movies have since been a tiring excess of… excess. Did Bad Boys 2 need to be 2.5 hours long? Of course not, but it’s just a question of how much good stupid fun you can pack into one movie. One can argue that this is exactly why Bay is the perfect man to do a Transformers movie (I wonder if this was the conclusion producer Steven Spielberg came to when he decided to call up Michael Bay?). I mean, it’s about a race of giant alien robots that can disguise themselves as cars, inspired by a line of toys from the 1980s.
Sure, they could’ve packed a loaded plot and richer characterizations for the robots to keep the story interesting; but let’s face it, it’s still going to be intrinsically stupid, and nobody is going to care about it as much as how good the special effects are or how awesome the robot brawls are. It’s decidedly retarded, and while that doesn’t automatically give it a free pass, it’s the kind of retarded that services one’s enjoyment of the film. Heck, in the third act the movie devolves into some sort of robotic game of football, with two teams of bots rampaging through metropolitan streets fighting over their Holy Grail. Like football, it’s the spectacle of it that’s incredible. You know how those rubber monster movies never really seem colossal? Bay keeps the camera from the POV of pedestrians, always looking up at the robots to give them a fitting scope. A lot of shots can’t even fit the bots’ full bodies into the frame, making them look that much more impressive.
I’m not going to lie; the script is a mess, and probably especially confusing to those not already familiar with the basic Transformers lore. Plot holes are as gigantic as the robots, and even straight exposition is handled poorly. So I’m here to help. All you have to know is that the good guys are the Autobots (the ones who look like slick GM cars), the bad guys are the Decepticons (the ones who look like sinister police/military vehicles), and they’re on Earth chasing after a dues-ex-machina (literally and figuratively) cube called the Allspark. Every other plot points, ignore.
The only story element that genuinely worked was the very Spielberg-ian relationship between fifteener Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and the Autobot Bumblebee, which is straight out of E.T., if E.T. was trying to help Elliot get laid with an underaged hottie mama (Megan Fox). Nevertheless, that actually makes the deep connection they have sort of believable. What teenager wouldn’t fall in love with his first car, the car that finally got him laid?
Other than that, though, the story is just an excuse for a barrage of special effects and comedy scenes. Michael Bay‘s recipe for a great movie = lots of things blowing the f--k up + everybody doing a stand up routine (all the actors involved try to steal their scenes). The whole movie is treated like one big overlong joke; like Bad Boys 2, without the tasteless sense of humor. What’s more, this one has no pretense of being anything other than a silly toy movie. It walks and talks like a photographic cartoon, as it should be. Its main sell – and I implore you to keep this in mind when you decide if Transformers is for you – is how cool it is to see robots morph into cars and vice versa. I find the film to be highly successful on that, with ILM delivering some of their best work to date.
Saying that Michael Bay was born to do this movie is not too far off. The film employs everything up his sleeves, as if his filmography was practice for Transformers. You have guns, hotties, car chases, rock soundtrack, military action (Pearl Harbor), a scene ripped off from The Rock, and even a self-referential joke where, after Autobot meteors crash, a kid remarks “This is easily 100 times cooler than Armageddon!” It’s for boys and their toys, and that’s that, but this is Bay’s magnum opus. His worth as a filmmaker can be assessed by this movie, and if you feel like laughing along, he makes a damn good giant robot movie.
"Transformers" opens July 4, 2007 and is rated PG13. Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi. Directed by Michael Bay. Written by John Rogers, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci. Starring Bernie Mac, John Turturro, Josh Duhamel, Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson.
