Mighty Morphin' Power Robots

Mark me a month behind the times here, but during some down time in San Diego before Comic Con began, I had the chance to catch Transformers. And after hearing generally positive reviews from most everyone I know who had seen it, I was fairly stunned at how much I thought it sucked.

After I got back to Denver, I discussed the movie briefly with a friend, and he set forth the opinion that maybe you had to have enjoyed the original cartoons to like the new movie. It seems like a workable theory to me. I owned maybe four or five of the toys, lost interest in them quickly, and never watched the cartoons. I brought no baggage with me to this experience, other than "alright, let's see the whiz-bang action movie."

Let me say this first. I understand that there is such a thing as the "Big Dumb Action Movie." I don't think they have to be dumb, though. Aliens and Terminator 2, among others, demonstrate this. I think action movies can be dumb and yet still deliver some visceral thrills. I'd put movies like Independence Day in this category -- "ID4" is about as dumb as they come, and you can feel your brain fighting to switch on while watching it, but you can't deny it's pretty damn fun at the time. My point being, I don't think an action movie should be excused when it's being dumb just because it's actiony and expensive. To me, if you start to be too aware of how dumb it is, that's evidence that the action isn't delivering well enough to distract you.

I mean, I'm only playing by the apparent rules of this Transformers film's universe here:

If I understand things right, the good robots want to save this Cube thingy because they believe it will help them repopulate the robot species. But we see this Cube in action in the movie, and it is clearly ONLY capable of producing evil robots. So what use is that? Unless they have a way to make it produce good robots instead. In which case, why the hell don't they do that and drum up some support?

Why are you sending this all-important Cube away with the kid when there are a half dozen trained soldiers around?

Why is he running away from the flying robot by fleeing up the stairs?

Why don't they plug Megatron with a few missiles before he thaws out? Bumblebee's right there and armed.

If the robots can change what it is they transform into (as we see multiple times in the movie), then why doesn't Optimus Prime change into something that flies to do battle against the flying evil robot?

Why is the sterotype "jive talkin'" robot the only one that dies?

And these are only the things I can think of from the last 15 minutes or so. The dumb was piling on so thick, I can't even remember what all came in the preceding two hours!

The film was utterly lacking in any meaningful stakes. All of humanity is supposed to be at risk, but none of the humans in the film seem unwooden enough to be particularly worth saving (other than perhaps Shia LaBeouf's character -- man, does he make a mountain out of molehill in this movie!). Every battle ultimately comes down to whether this computer-generated mass of pixels will triumph over that computer-generated mass of pixels. It's like watching the cut scenes of a video game, without actually having the fun part of playing the game and taking an active role in getting to said cut scenes.

...Which I guess goes back to the theory that perhaps, if you watched the cartoon or were a fan of the Transformers back in the 80s, you have more of an attachment to these robot characters, and actually do care what happens to them. More power to you if that's you. I'm not trying to say that anyone who enjoyed this movie is wrong. I just don't at all see whatever those people saw here.

On the strength of Shia LaBeouf's good work, this film avoids getting an F from me. But barely. D- is nothing to be proud of, and nothing I'd ever recommend.