Transformers (2007)

Strictly for 8 year olds

Nearly everything has already been said and written about this movie. However, consider this for the sheer level of stupidity we are talking about:

Sam's great-great-grandfather discovers Megatron in the arctic ice in 1897; Sam is also supposed to be a typical teenager getting his first car and is at most 17 years old. If we allow for some 30 years between generations, then his great-great-grandfather would have been born 137 years ago (4 generations, i.e. 4x30 years). That means around 1870 - make that 1860 to account for late bloomers in the family.

In any case he would have been in his late 20s or 30s at the time of the expedition, which by itself makes perfect sense - arduous arctic voyages are a young man's game. And yet the movie portrays him as an old man! Played in fact by veteran actor William Morgan Sheppard, who was already in his early 70s at the time of production.

Doesn't this kind of say it all? It either means that everybody involved in the movie was a moron, from the director all the way down; or that they assumed their audience was so infantile, that they could never conceive of a great-great-grandfather as having been a young man.

Why harp on a minor point? Because it could have been so easily avoided and because it makes it impossible to give this movie any benefit of the doubt. You can forgive all the nonsense and ignore the plot holes for the sake of entertainment, but you don't need to get insulted in the process. January 2, 2009

Micheal Bay was right!

This is the way Transformers was suppose to be seen!!! The Special effects look amazing in HD and the sound will blow you away. If you have a blu-ray player you need this movie. The bonus content is also in HD which was a great addition. January 1, 2009

Transformers

This movie was a lot better than I expected, it has a lot of action and has a lot going on, so I recommend to those that like action movies. It also has the new 2010 chevy camaro and it looks cool, so check it out. December 28, 2008

Lots of good points, lots of bad points

While I was never a fan of the original toys, comic books, TV series, movie or anything, I've been as swept up in the hype as anybody else has. Also I have a five year old boy, so there was really no good reason for me to avoid this film simply because it was a Michael Bay project.

I found it very good. It started quite well, with some mystery about what the hell these things were anyway, and why they were on earth. Then the character development was actually fairly okay, although uber-geek Sam Witwicky, played by Shia LaBoeuf was a bit irritating at first. Never mind, he was introduced at the same time as the shapely character played by Megan Fox, who has a very appropriate name. Everything about the film was fairly good, and at times the action scenes were such that I was thinking to myself, "hey, I'm having fun in spite of myself."

The main problem of the film was in the editing - enough to make me wonder if the Singapore release is some unpolished version and the one that will be released on the fourth of July in the U.S. will be a bit smoother... although maybe the thought that Hollywood types would give as much attention to the plot as they would to their CG and explosions is giving these people too much credit. Some action scenes between the Autobots and the Decepticons don't make sense (who hit whom, where are they attacking from, where was Optimus Prime when Megatron was doing this and that, whatever). Other plot points seem juxtaposed somewhat, so it's a bit confusing. It also seemed to be a film that couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to be a film about people or a film about robots. The "characters" of the robot, unfortunately, aren't very fleshed out, and the scene where Optimus Prime introduces his crew seems it was taken right out of Top Secret ("this is Duchamp, Levieus, Escargot, Latrine, Deja-vu, and Chocolat Mousse"). The human characters, oddly enough, are quite adequately fleshed out, often too much so - sure Sam Witwicky's dad is nitpickety, but the scene when he's trying to find something in his room while the impatient autobots are waiting outside trying to save the world, and his fussy folks are going on about whether he did his chores or not is a bit tiresome.

One of the funny thing about the film is all of its wacky bits. There's a scene where an Autobot pisses on a police officer. The chihuaua is called "Mojo," and there's a rather surreal scene where an Autobot is scolding him - "Bad Mojo - BAD Mojo." Then there's John Torturro's over-the-top performance as a government operative, which is quite funny. Sam's parents are also quite good, despite the above-mentioned scene, as a sort of non-gangster Tony and Carmella Soprano. Jon Voigt is in the film, going through the motions as the Secretary of Defense who loses his marbles near the end. Then there's also John Robinson, who played Stacey Peralta in "Lords of Dogtown" who has a brief role - probably got paid more here than for Lords of Dogtown. There's this priceless bit in the end credits where they talk about "alien sightings," and say to the effect "oh no, we live in a democracy, our government wouldn't hold secrets like that from us." In another superfluous scene, there's this weird interchange like "hey - there are three scratch lines on this, like Freddie Kruger." "No, Freddie Kruger has four claws, Wolverine has three." The music is generally quite good too, although the re-use of that Kill Bill song was a bit weird. December 26, 2008

"Transformers" on Blu-ray

I used to love Transformers as a kid and I still love them! I well remember the Autobots vs the Deceptacons. I would enjoy seeing some reruns of the original show, but for now I guess this movie will do. I was amazed at how the movie is both nostalgic and current with todays techs. I told my hubby (whose account I use at Amazon) that the Transformers rule, all the while he disagreed till we saw this movie. So for all you oldschool peeps out there, a little reminder ... " Oldschool Is Cool!" (with a little help from our tech friends) December 22, 2008

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