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Sure I had the toys, who didn’t? I watched the cartoon and wanted to see the animated movie in theater, didn’t get to though, had to wait for VHS. I even rocked out to the soundtrack, only later in life did I learn how cheesy Stan Bush is. So I can honestly say I liked the Transformers. When word got out a live action movie was coming I can’t say I was super-excited but I did think it had the possibility to be cool. Then I heard Michael Bay was directing. Okay, I liked The Rock and Armageddon. Bay is not an auteur, but the man has made some okay summer movies in the past. What I really wanted to see was a cool action flick with transforming robots fighting each other. From the marketing I saw it looked like I might get that. Instead the movie “transformed” into a goofy kiddie movie, and not a very good one at that.

The movie opens at a U.S. Army base in Qatar. A mysterious helicopter lands without identifying itself. After all the precautions are taken, every points weapons at it, the pilots are instructed to leave the chopper. It then morphs into a giant robot and starts tearing up the base and killing as many of the soldiers as it can, though a few get away. The robot then hacks into the computers looking for a specific piece of info. We then flash to L.A. and Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), a teenager about to get his first car. Guess what the car turns out to be? Yep, a transforming robot, that chooses Sam more than Sam chooses it. Sam uses the car to try and impress the beautiful Mikaela (Megan Fox). Eventually his car starts acting strange. Sam soon learns that his car is Bumblebee, a robot guardian sent here to protect him. After a quick one-on-one fight with a transforming cop car, Bumblebee soon contacts the other Autobots (the good guys) and they come crashing to earth. Sam was chosen because he has a pair of glasses that belonged to his great-grandfather who was an antarctic explorer. A hundred years ago Megatron, the decepticon leader (the bad guys) had come to earth looking for the “allspark”, a cube that can bring life to their planet or be used to destroy planets. Megatron was frozen in the ice until he was discovered by old man Witwicky. The location of the allspark was embedded on the pair of glasses. That is why everyone is fighting.

Decent enough setup but by the time we learn all this the movie is half over. At this point we’ve had only one fight between robots and lot of lame jokes that don’t work half the time. We haven’t seen Megatron at the halfway mark and never get a feel of just how mean/tough/vicious he is supposed to be. In fact you never get a real idea of who any of the robots are except for Optimus Prime and Bumblbee. These are supposed to be the stars of this movie. As good as Shia LeBouf is in the movie, he has the only memorable performance in it, no one ever said “Oh boy, they are making a Transformers movie starring Shia!!!”

When we finally do get robot on robot action it’s poorly filmed. Bay loves his quick cuts, shaky cameras, and close up shots. All of that makes the action impossible to follow. One minute Megatron and Prime are duking it out. All of a sudden we cut to Sam on the run being chased by Megatron and Prime is nowhere to be found. We never see how Megatron gave the autobot leader the slip or anything. It just gets so confusing there is no point in trying to make sense of it all. I just waited for it to end.

That is not even taking in to account the many plot holes and poor choices. Take for instance the little Decepticon who infiltrates Air Force One by turning into a boom box and hiding under a seat. People can’t even get toe-nail clippers on a commercial flight but I’m supposed to believe a boom box can mysteriously show up on the President’s plane? There is a scene where the Army shows off what the allspark can do by zapping a Nokia cell phone. It turns into a little robot that fires bullets and missiles. Or the biggest plot gaffe, the glasses. When Megatron imprints the location of the cube on them it is in the Antarctic. Yet when Optimus Prime decodes it seventy some years later, the imprint leads to the cubes new location, underneath the Hoover Dam.

I was more disappointed in what saw this movie had potential. The special effects were great. The robots looked real and a part of the world they inhabited. Some of the humor worked. When Mikeala walks away from Sam and Bumblee the radio belts out Player’s “Baby come back”. Stuff like that was funny. Shia LeBouf was very good as the teenage kid learning there is more than meets the eye to his first car. The outline of the story was okay, there was just not enough to back it up.

Some people say it’s foolish to try and read so much into a film like Transformers. That it is just supposed to be fun and go along with the flow. On the surface I agree with that statement. But just because a movie is “fun” or is a “kids movie” doesn’t make it okay to be just plain bad. Transformers is a bad movie. If you liked The Rock, Armageddon, or Robo Jox you might like Transformers.