Transformers (2007)
Grade:A-
Michael Bay’s latest aural and visual assault on the summer multiplex, Transformers, has a singular and simple purpose: to blow shit up. And blow shit up, it does. It blows shit up real good.
And really, in a movie about an epic battle between good and evil robots (Autobots and Decepticons, respectively) who roam the universe searching for some giant cube whose power is never quite clearly explained, do we expect anything besides a rolicking good time at the movies? Of course not! Substance? Bah! Compelling human drama? Pfft! Transformers is successful on its own terms, and it is to be commended for that.
Shia LaBeouf takes one giant step towards the A-list with his lead role here as Sam Witwicky, a high school junior whose first car turns out to be Bumblebee, a member of the Autobots (Sam also has a convenient tie to the past with the Autobots). Megan Fox is Mikaela, Sam’s classmate who conveniently knows her way around under a car’s hood (the reasons behind this provide a fairly superficial and unnecessary subplot later in the film, which won’t be divulged here). Sam likes Mikaela, so naturally, when the epic battle between robots gets underway, they happen to be in the same place and must spend the rest of the movie working together and perhaps… learning to love one another?
The plot is disposable – it’s merely there to have some sort of framework to structure the action scenes around and to provide some way to get Shia and Megan from Point A to Point B – or, I suppose, from Action Scene A to Action Scene B. On this level, the film’s plot is successful. Plot points get muddled at times, but we’re not really watching for the plot. We’re watching for the set pieces. Michael Bay more than delivers here, with CGI that is top notch, convincingly integrated in a variety of settings (a highway overpass, a desert, Sam’s backyard). In fact, never once do we doubt that the Transformers are real, even though they clearly aren’t.
More than a great action film, though, Transformers is surprisingly funny. The film knows it’s a crazy action spectacle, and the screenplay seems to delight in poking fun at itself and finding the inherent humor in the situations that Sam and Mikaela find themselves in. The aforementioned Bumblebee, for example, can’t talk like the other Autobots and must communicate through snippets of songs, a device that’s milked effectively for laughs. A sequence where the Autobots must hide in Sam’s backyard is deft in its physical humor paired with Bay’s skilled handling of the camera (I know, I never thought I would say that, either). And Julie White, as Sam’s mom, has the best comic timing you’ll see in a long while.
All in all, Transformers never aspires to be anything deep or moving (although you might detect a little bit of political allegory as the conclusion nears); rather, it is content to exist as a great action flick, and really, would we want it any other way?
Bottom Line:
Transformers blows shit up. It blows shit up real good. And we wouldn’t have it any other way, right?
© 2004-2009 Ben Waldorf. Posted October 28, 2007. IMDB