Transformers

It's been a long, long time since I posted here. What can I say, life happens. Anyway, and this is late since it's been out a while, I finally saw Transformers.

Michael Bay is such an interesting director, an enigma really, because you want to love, he does so much right, but soooo much wrong. His movies are a balancing act, like getting a great meal with terrible service, you're left unsure how you should feel about the restaurant.

That's Transformers: a great meal with shitty service. The movie is visually awesome, the special effects are great, the robots cool and sleek. Everything Bay does visually works well. It's fun to look at. Add to that Shia LeBouf, who has a dry witted coolness about that I love, and you have great food.

Now, Megan Fox, the smoking hot love interest, does not turn in the performance of the century here. The storyline is incredibly weak and the love story so clumsy and ham-handed it's almost laugh out loud funny at times. Then there's this ridiculous attempt to surprise us, and LeBouf's character, with Mikaela's (Megan Fox)"I come from the wrong side of the tracks but I'm a good person" story. And LeBouf, who is supposed to be blind with love (and lust) is so stupid that he can't see past her criminal father and her tiny arrest record. IT's not just cliche, it's absurd!

It's like someone said "Megan's character isn't complex enough. You there, mopping the floor, put that down and write me a back story! Quick!" The whole convoluted, set-him-up-for-massive=guilt-later thing is over in minutes and this sad attempt at character building takes place in roughly 10 sentences. It's awkward, out of place in the film, done before and not needed.

Then there's two attempts to satire the police for reasons unknown to anyone. First a weird, rather stupid detective that appears in the beginning--he is, for no reason at all, like some idiot cop from the worst Saturday Night Live sketch ever. And later, John Turturro takes his turn as an obsessed, stupid and slightly mean Federal Agent. Again, out of place and ham-handed. It actually took away a great deal from the movie for me. This quirky agent reminded me a lot of the bizarre FBI Agent in the Frighteners with Michael J. Fox. In that movie, it worked perfectly and fit right in, in this one Turturros character is a sore thumb.

So, the story is the bad service.

Now what do I think of the movie? Well, it's a Michael Bay tradition to capture something pretty on screen, having a knack for creating dramatic moments with his direction, or, as in Armageddon and parts of Pearl Harbor, perfectly capturing a piece of Americana and making us a little nostalgic. It's also a tradition to screw it up with crappy dialogue, terrible attempts at love stories and weak plot lines. Never mind dynamic, growing characters, they do not exist in his world.

So I knew what I was getting into. For me, the service was so bad that it took away from the great food. It left me feeling OK, I could have eaten somewhere else cheaper and faster. For kids it'll be fun and it's worth seeing for the effects, but it could have been a whole lot better. I would say I came away disappointed. But the sad truth is, I will dine in the Michael Bay restaurant again, his visuals are too good and most of his films are too much fun not to.