Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Well, I will first off say that there is no point really discussing plot and character development, because the film takes the bold approach of ignoring such things.  About halfway through the film, at the precise moment where my brain started hurting, I realized that I had to just completely abandon any hopes that the story would be any better than the previous movie, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen.  While I had believed that Revenge of The Fallen had a convoluted story, Dark of the Moon ups the ante to astronomical proportions, and, in the interest of self-preservation, it was best that I just left such things alone.

Characters in the film are just set pieces that exist to spew out expository dialogue and dramatically shout out names of the Transformers periodically.  Sam Witwiky (Shia LaBeouf), who is supposed to be the main character who we cheer for from the previous two installments, has now evolved into an entitled jerk who somehow always seems to get super model girlfriends.  There really is next to nothing likeable about him, and for a lot of the film I was hoping he was going to get squashed by a bulking Decepticon.  I won’t spoil his fate for you, but I will say that I did not feel properly satisfied by the end.

With no plot or interesting characters, we really ended up getting what seems to be the typical Michael Bay movie, which is all about focussing on big effects and big noises.  After an excruciating time watching Revenge of The Fallen, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this film had left behind a lot of the infantile humour and tone from its predecessor and seemed to be a step towards progress.  Where my intelligence and self-respect were under attack while enduring Revenge of The Fallen, I felt free of such assaults with Dark of the Moon.

That is not to say that it was lacking obnoxious elements (such as the aforementioned Witwiky) or what seem to be visual favourites of Bay.  It begins to feel impossible that I will ever see a film of his that does not have a slow motion shot of a person getting out of a vehicle, a slow motion shot of someone staring at something with much conviction on their face, and a slow motion shot of a helicopter.  It all does begin to feel so redundant and that we are merely treading over the same ground, time and time again.

I was, however, able to find some level of entertainment in the movie.  Perhaps that was because I was able to view it as a purely visceral experience without having to grind through juvenile humour about farts and robotic testicles.  The effects in the film where brilliant, and the flow of them seemed to be cut and inserted into the movie in a more flowing form that the previous film.  What ended up happening was that I actually enjoyed myself on some level, which I am not ashamed to admit.

This is the type of movie that I could see a number of people liking for its action sequences, but as a whole, it still was just not there for me.  While so many elements were an improvement over the last film, it is still a film that is ultimately lacking in a well-rounded presentation.  It is never a good sign when I am cheering for the protagonist to be offed by any means possible, willing to accept anything from giant explosion to simple food poisoning from cross contamination due an improper kitchen cleaning regiment.  The film succeeded in not feeling like a complete waste of time, but that is never a shining endorsement.

Rating – 2 out of 4 stars

Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen

Because of an upcoming Transformers movie this summer, as well as being a little down on Michael Bay’s Pain and Gain from last year, I thought that instead of just getting on the gripe train of big loud Bay movies it would be good if I spent some time and watched the second and third movies in the Transformers franchise.  The last thing I want is to start to develop notions of people’s skills and styles without giving the proper amount of chances.  Sure, I had this belief that a Michael Bay film will be filled to the gills with music, an overabundance of loud special effects, and plenty of slow motion shots of things that do not need slow motion, such as people getting out of cars, people looking up, people walking, and a helicopter flying through the skies as the camera looks up at someone’s face.

Going into Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, I made all the best efforts to view the movie as it was and not for what I expected.  I would rather be the person who defends something than the person who attacks it.  It is easy to get on the train of malcontent and ride into the verbal fray with everyone else, but it takes intelligence and backbone to present an argument to the contrary.

I have none.  Nothing.  I have nothing at all to say to come to the defence of this film.  After I was immediately boxed in the ears by sound effects from the arrival of the Paramount logo, and then doused with more audio assault with countless scenes that were drowned in music that felt forced and out of place, as well as sound effects that were just as jarring, I knew that I was in for a very long ride.  Although, I don’t think that ‘jarring’ is the best way to describe this movie.  While elements may be appropriately described as such, the majority of the film just suffers from a complete lack of cohesion as it bumbles through the dark, looking for a sane plot and decent characters that it knows it may have left behind with the original film.

I know that not all movies need to make perfect sense, and that there is something about mindless, big budget, popcorn munchers that can be fun to watch.  I do enjoy a visceral waste of time on the big screen as much as anyone, but I also don’t want to feel like I was treated like an idiot for slapping down money to be there.  A movie can be simple and effective, but it starts to fall apart when we begin to feel like our intelligence is being insulted or that we are just being given something that is a sequel for sequel’s sake.

Transformers was nowhere near a perfect movie, but I was able to find a lot of fun in it.  The visuals were spectacular, but it also had some semi-interesting characters and brought in a bit of humour as well.  The parents of the main character were funny in the first movie, but in a relatable way.  Their personalities were turned up to eleven, but they did not seem like caricatures.  This time around, they are simply just spilling grade two level ‘humour’ in a way that makes it feel like the production team is mechanically extracting it from their souls.

This movie really feels like the Jar Jar Binks of sequels.  It is overly goofy, it is awkward, it attempts some level of seriousness, and someone thought that it was a good idea.  There is absolutely no cohesion to this film.  It is just random elements of a movie that feel thrown together to somehow get the audience from one fight scene to another.  The humour in this film is so dumbed down that it relies on jokes about dogs humping dogs, legs being humped, and farts.

This lack of cohesion that I mention comes from just an unfortunate script that was penned by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman, all people who have worked on some quality projects in the past.  I do not know what happened here, but it just turned into a miserable outing of being hauled through the slop.  An example that I like from the film is when our hero, Sam, gets attacked by a bunch of mini-transfomers out of the blue, he yells to his Autobot guardian Bumblebee, who comes to his aid.  After Bumblebee fights them off, Sam then scolds him for coming out in the open and proceeds to tell the transformer that the days of danger are behind him and that he no longer needs a guardian.  I kind of felt like I was losing my mind at this point in the film, and we were just past the introduction.

I could also give other examples that are even more inane, but I won’t waste any of our time doing that.  On the plus side, I did laugh once when John Turturro said a line, and the visuals looked pretty amazing.  Outside of that, it was not a good movie at all.  As I said before, I have no problems with brainless action flicks and believe there is a place for them out there.  Still, to be presented with something that simply throws things at you so randomly for the constant sake of simply getting to the next joke about testicles or the next fight scene gets more than a little annoying.  We want to feel like when we spend our money on a movie we are being treated with respect and our intelligence is not being insulted, and that is what is happening with this movie.

Rating - 1 out of 4 stars