Shaky Cam Must Die!!!

Saw Transformers, was impressed with the impressive bits, bored with the boring bits, and somewhat humored by the humorous bits. There's plenty of stupid to go around in this movie, but it's stupid in a good natured way, and that's important. It's two tales intertwined, a very simple old fashioned boy meets girl story, and a very simple bad guys versus good guys tale. Both tales are told less artfully than they should be, but you don't buy a ticket to this ride expecting a whole lot of plot.

Shia Labeouf is an unlikely action hero, but all we get nowadays are unlikely action heroes, the likely ones aren't ironic enough, or something.

Ed Driscoll points to this piece at Libertas praising the film, and mentioning the core pro-military, and pro-American message in the film.

This movie will still do fine in foreign lands, though. Even with the pro-American message (presumably a bad thing nowadays), the America haters will be happy to see large portions of Downtown Los Angeles torn to pieces.

Why don't aliens ever pick on Tehran, Beijing, or Caracas? Funny how they always end up in either DC, LA, or NYC.

The effects are the most seamlessly intergrated CGI with live action effects, ever. Despite the over the top nature of the destruction, you never get the sense that the actors are just reacting to a tennis ball in a green screened soundstage. The Autobots and Decepticons occupy real physical space, and interact in that space convincingly. Think of the recent War of the Worlds and King Kong remakes, this was the opposite. Both of those films had big set pieces with the heroes running from unimaginable destruction, yet you never got the sense of physical danger you should have.

But back to the shaky cam. Michael Bay uses it way too much in this, and it makes it impossible to follow the action in some of the sequences. Plus once you've seen one impossibly articulated and speedy robot, you've seen them all, so despite an attempt to give character to each robot, they have a tendency to blend in action.

It's a deeply flawed film, would have been the tightest, most visually stunning popcorn film, ever made at 90 minutes with a better script. Instead it was a meandering 144 minute film that has a few too many lulls. They don't need to lose the entire boy meets girl plot, but it should have been a lot tightened up, plus the whole hacker and "section 7" subplots were superfluous.

GM probably will get their money's worth, especially when the new Camaro comes out 1Q 2009 (maybe GM will encourage Paramount to rush a sequel that summer to give sales an extra boost, they always leave room for sequels in these pictures, could make it a Bumblebee solo pic, no Shia, no other Autobots, just the sweet, sweet Bumblebee and his bitchin' Camaro self). All the good guy robots are GM branded, but it never feels like a commercial. Selling the new Camaro in any color other than bumblebee gold, might be tough, though, it looks awesome in that color. In the film, turns out it's a reskinned Pontiac GTO in Camaro drag, but I won't tell if you don't.

But mainly, try and see this film in the loudest theater in your area, this is a film that sounds best turned up to 11.

I haven't made fun of Manohla Dargis in awhile, but luckily, the NYT made the mistake of assigning her this film (or she gladly volunteered to see a film she knew before seeing she'd hate).

The opening paragraph sets the tone

Boys and their toys are in full formation in “Transformers,” a movie of epically assaultive noise and nonsense. Originating with the shape-shifting toys — created in Japan, rebranded in America — that transform from robots into stuff like cars and planes, then back again, the movie has been designed as the ultimate in shock-and-awe entertainment. The result is part car commercial, part military recruitment ad, a bumper-to-bumper pileup of big cars, big guns and, as befits its recently weaned target demographic, big breasts.

She says it as if those are bad things, "epically assaultive noise and nonsense", sounds good to me. Just in case that didn't prove Manohla's disdain for this film, and for its jingoism, she uncorks this bit

The movie waves the flag equally for Detroit and the military, if to no coherent end. Last year the director of General Motors brand-marketing and advertising clarified how the company’s cars were integral to the movie: “It’s a story of good versus evil. Our cars are the good guys.” And sure enough, most of the Autobots take the shape of GM vehicles, including Ratchet (a Hummer H2) and Ironhide (a TopKick pickup truck).

But, remember kiddies, Brand America is the only real evil in this world, and this movie didn't have the decency to even poke proper fun at our current president

Shape-shifters of another kind, Hollywood action movies bend this way and that politically in a bid to please as many viewers as possible, but they almost always play out exactly the same, as entertaining violence leads to heroic individualism leads to the restoration of order. “Transformers” is no different, even if it does offer chewy distraction for the bored viewer: the would-be suicide bomber, American soldiers tearing it up in the Middle East while American cars keep up the fight at home, along with plugs for Burger King, Lockheed Martin, Mountain Dew and the Department of Defense. Why there’s even a president who asks for a Ding Dong. He’s wearing red socks like a big old clown, but no one really laughs.

What an ass. On the Dargis scale I give this review only 500 millidargis (a reminder of what the dargis unit is, here) as at least it's clear what she thought about the film and the reasons for her dislikes. The review is still mostly useless as a review of the film given that she spends most of the word count accusing all men of being infantile and Americans being war happy and our corporations being greedy, but at least she sort of mentions some specifics about the film while venting her spleen.