Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 46

Alternate Title; Michael Bay forgets to take his Ritalin.

Disclaimer; At the time of this writing, I have another article pending approval by Helium.com that I spend more than enough time complaining about Michael Bay. So don’t mistake this article for a Michael Bay rant. This is a movie review. It just so happens that he directed the film.

And I’ll try to avoid any spoilers.

When I was between the ages of 5-8 years old, I recall coming home from school and plunking down in front of the television to watch episodes of G.I.Joe, Transformers, and Thundercats back to back. The glory days of not caring about deep involving plots, acting, budget, special effects, or the fact that my homework still wasn’t done. If I was lucky it would be done in time for Macgyver anyway. No way was I going to miss those shows.

Gone are those days, and now, twenty years later, I’m of an age where those things matter to me….or they’re supposed to anyway. My homework still isn’t done.

And now that Transformers has hit the big screen, I of course, had to go see it in the theaters. I suppose that was my first mistake.

Now normally I’m the type who goes to see a film if it looks like the theater experience will make a difference in the presentation of the film. Typically special effects, explosions, mass mayhem and carnage are the type of things that draw me into the theater. I had no idea until this film that all of those things could be overdone. I had a lot of trouble tracking the fight scenes as the Autobot on Decepticon combat, for some reason, involved a lot of close ups, dust, debris, explosions, and not enough “letting me see what the heck is happening.”

And that brings me to my next point; the robot choreography. It starts of reasonable enough, but as the Autobots are introduced I couldn’t help but notice that they were all prancing and posing! There are several scenes in the film, particularly during the combat, when the Autobots strike poses and execute rolls and flips as though they were practicing for an audition on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. To top that off, it seems that all of the Autobots took some Kung Fu lessons during their 20 year hiatus. Much of the robot-on-robot combat involves a lot of jumping around, adding to the confusion that already is the many battles. Funny, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles never looked so tall or metallic before. The human versus robot fight scenes are much easier to follow, with the exception of the climax,