Movie review: Transformers

by John P. Meyer

It's not difficult to detect the lineage of Michael Bay's directorial roots by viewing his current release, Transformers; after all, Playboy Video Centerfold: Kerri Kendall (1990) appears as his first listed direction credit, and since then (no telling about before) he seems to have maintained an affinity for pinup-worthy beautiful women. (Evidence here, here and here.) In this arguably more ambitious 2007 film, canny observers (i.e., those not actually asleep in their cushiony theater seats) will note the presence of Megan Fox and Rachael Taylor, both of whom go a long way towards diverting film-goer attention from the gigantic metal-clanging CG robots towering over them.

This movie is loud, stupid and good looking in a blatant, manufactured sort of way; if you decide to let it, it will blow your critical ass away. You might even find yourself - as I'm man enough to admit having done - shedding a surreptitious tear for the melancholy plight of the Autobots in the final reel. But enough about my pitiful emotional affliction.

Not having been a part (in even the most peripheral sense) of the Transformer culture prior to watching this film, I make a good test case for non-initiated viewership, and I'll hereby report that you don't need to know anything about the Transformer mythos in order to follow the story line; in fact, the only places where you're likely to lose your way are in the visual narratives incorporating human's-eye-views of Transformer transformation action: that is, after having seen it occur a dozen times, I could no more tell you how Omega Prime converts from a Kenworth into an angular Autobot than I could explain Einstein's general theory of relativity. (No, wait, I can actually do that...)

In terms of the plot, it would be difficult to do better than this. But since words are my stock in trade, I'll offer up the following synopsis:

Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf, last seen in Disturbia - and last heard from in Surf's Up) is your typical hormonal teenage boy with girls on his mind (and, in graphical form, under his mattress) and a car-buying expedition in his immediate future. His dad (Kevin Dunn) takes him to the used auto dealership of Bobby Bolivia (Bernie Mac) where he (Sam) hooks up with a vintage Camaro with quirky functionality (such as the endearing habit of tuning its AM radio to incident-appropriate songs by way of commentary/communication).

Meanwhile, back at the high school in-crowd lake shore hangout, babelicious Mikaela "Kaela" Banes (Megan Fox) is fending off the random banalities of her letter-jacket boyfriend when Sam shows up with his new/old car to make some sort of ill-defined play for her affections. (He's got spunk, that kid!) Sure enough, an opportunity presents itself when Kaela inexplicably reaches egotistical jock overload and decides to walk home rather than ride back to town in the company of Mr. Most-Likely-to-Score-a-Touchdown (on field or off).

Sam offers her a ride and, rather annoyingly to those of us who have found ourselves adrift on similar seas, she appears receptive to his stumblebum socially-inept advances. (This is, after all, science fiction.) Thus is born a budding romance that will see itself tested in the proceeding two hours or so of magnificent metallic mayhem.

On a grander scale, U.S. forces in Qatar (with New Mexico's White Sands standing in for purposes of location filming) are blindsided when a Decepticon advance guard bot attempts (amid the confusion of various explosions and ray gun blasts) to access the military's defense network. Turns out this evil branch of the galactic robot family tree is attempting to lay metal claws on something called the Allspice (er, make that "Allspark"), which thingy has the usual sort of all-powerful life-giving properties that can be put to work in the interest of either good or ill depending upon its wielder's predilections. Kind of like political office on a cosmic scale.

Visually, the Allspice (sorry, I keep doing that!) looks like nothing more than a trimmed-down version of the Borg cube, although it apparently has no interest in assimilating alien cultures. (Rather, it likes to lie dormant for generations awaiting the deft caress of a morphing General Motors vehicle.) In the best MacGuffin tradition, the Allspark (ahem) seems to have been written into the plot only for the purpose of eventually being destroyed as a talisman too dangerous for wielding by the general population. Not unlike this thing.

Sam Witwicky's grandfather, it turns out, was an arctic explorer; in the aftermath of falling down a crevasse to what should rightfully have been his death, old Captain Witwicky stumbled upon the key to the location of the Allspark - a secret that has remained such for lo these last hundred years. With the arrival of Optimus Prime (voiced with baritonic splendor by Peter Cullen) and his fellow good-guy Autobots (including Sam's Camaro, otherwise known as "Bumblebee"), hot on the steel heels of the minions of Megatron (the big bad bot), the quest for the Allspark kicks into high gear.

The on-screen effects are effective if occasionally a trifle hard to follow (reference transformation gripe, above); the score (by Steve Jablonsky) is at times annoyingly hard-driving, though it provides effective accompaniment to the Terminator-worthy bot-bashing action.

That's probably all you need to know, and there's really no need to know even this much; the 144-minute film is fast-paced and chock-full of bloodless thunder that will leave you and your attending offspring little time for ruminating on the one-dimensionality of the robotic characters - or their human counterparts. Keeping in mind that Hasbro is credited as a production company, I can't imagine what more one might expect.

TEENAGE FREUDIAN SLIP: "I was wondering if I could ride you home." - Sam's mangled pickup line to Kaela

THANKS FOR THE EUPHEMISM: "You can call it 'Sam happy time.' " - Sam's mom's suggested alternative to "masturbation."

BEST COP CAR LOGO EVER: "To punish and enslave" - motto inscribed on the side of Barricade (in black-and-white guise)