Film Review: Transformers

Here it is folks: post 250.

Will it be the last? ...We'll see.

Caught Transformers tonight. Thank goodness, 'cause I was getting tired of avoiding the trailers.

I really liked this movie. It pretty much rocked. KA was practically giddy afterwards.

Sure, it's a fanboy flick. Just like most movies based on comics/cartoons/etc, you kinda have to be a fan going in (though kids seeing the film will likely be jazzed, too - no pun intended). This movie doesn't waste too much time with exposition, though it's all there. That was actually one of the things I liked about this film - the way the characters were introduced. It was a pretty slow process, but it felt natural (if that's possible in a film about robot aliens invading Earth, disguised as everyday objects). I thought I'd hate the humans in the film, especially the teens. I figured they'd just get in the way. But the regular struggles of the main characters actually helped with the exposition of the mechanical stars.

I'll try not to spoil too much. Let's see...I thought Michael Bay's style was well-suited to this kind of film (I actually don't mind the guy's "look" usually - it's the stories that tend to suck). The casting was interesting - like I said, I didn't mind the humans too much (with one or two exceptions that I won't mention here since I don't know if it's common knowledge that these particular actors are in it). I liked the Transformers, though I would have liked there to have been a little more of them, especially the Decepticons (though I could have done with less Soundwave who was a little too George Lucas for my liking).

I gotta say, the little nods to the original tv cartoon had me grinning like a kid.

So, all in all, this was a definite thumbs up, with mondo credit going to the artistic team. This movie could have easily sucked, but it hit most of the right notes. The movie runs a little long at times and some of the CG was a bit of a mess (close-ups during battles usually just translated into a bunch of colours on screen, with no real sense of what was happening - wide angles were welcome), but the story was much better than I had expected.

Yup, thumbs up.

Boy, am I glad it didn't suck.