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More Than Meets the Funnybone
By bukkhead | August 31, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘TRANSFORMERS’
Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
Directed by Michael Bay
Rated PG-13
144 mins.
Yes there is more to the Transformers movie than meets the eye. Just accept it. Don’t shy away from the corny line, which has become a cliché; embrace it. That was Michael Bay’s goal, and he succeeded. Unless you go into the movie with pre-conceived notions, you’re going to be pleasantly surprised, I think.
I might have, myself, gone in with some pre-conceived notions if I had paid attention to more trailers. Let me take a page from the Bill O’Reilly book of movie reviews, and tell you that Transformers is, unfortunately, pro-war propaganda film. (Some of you will recall that Bill O’Reilly called The Bourne Ultimatum an anti-CIA anti-America propaganda film. And he was serious). I feel like the “no such thing as bad press” ethos is built into any film that features American soldiers shooting up sand dunes. So if I had known this was going to take up the first part of the movie, I would have passed. I’m glad I didn’t.
Because the movie is funny. I mean, except for the action sequences, I was pretty much laughing the whole time. You’ve got to hand it to the writers for realizing a big budget movie requires characters we can relate with, and even the most wannabe nerd in the world can’t quit relate to a talking semi tractor-trailer, no matter how much he wants to. I haven’t seen Shia LeBouef in too many things, but the casting was perfect. The scenes with his mother and father are priceless, and are alone worth the price of admission, in my opinion. Add to that the scenes with John Turturro, and you got more than you paid for.
And then there’s the action scenes themselves. I would have though there would have been more of these. Or that they would have been longer. I don’t know if the animators were just getting tired, or if the budget only called for so many explosions… or maybe they just wanted the big ending melee to seem that much bigger. Or maybe, just maybe, Michael Bay is starting to get it. Maybe he’s realizing that we are kinda burnt-out on explosions and car chases and fight scenes. We want some meaning; we’re jaded by too many special effects.
Not that the film is void of them. I mean come on. You get to watch the Autobots transform, which is cool the first few times (and nothing at all like the toys, which I have mixed feelings about—if I may, they feel more Japanese, which is cool for the sake of consistency, but detracts from whatever realism we might have tried to believe in). You also get to watch what amounts to a bar fight, but instead of chairs and tables being broken into pieces, it’s 30 story-buildings. All lots of fun.
But in the end, Transformers delivers because its hilarious. It’s corny, and its pro-war, and predictable, and the guy gets the girl, but action transformed into comedy works out nicely.
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