One hundred and sixty five minutes. That’s how long this crap lasts. Do you know what the average length of a Transformers movie is? 153 minutes. Do you know what the average rating of a Transformers movie is? 6.5 on imdb (trust me when I say that ain’t good for a blockbuster series), 32% on rotten tomatoes (and less than 1 star from me). Now what part of that justifies the just-shy-of-three-hours run time?
The last iteration of this idiocy, Transformers 3: A Cornucopia of Big Dumb Robots, had a significant problem (other than the obvious, “this is stupid and you’ve created a vehicle to exhibit the acting talents of Shia LeBeowulf“) — you couldn’t tell a good robot from a bad one. When you center your movie around endless robot fights, this can be a tad off-putting. Transformers 4: Even More Big Dumb Robots got around this by making the evil robots out of instantly malleable metal — they show up in a whirlwind and suddenly become the bad robot. It’s not so much transformation as magic. I suppose somewhere out there is a guy who thinks Transformers has completely lost its way from the Hasbro ideal. I’m not that guy — these movies just blow.
Shia has been dumped in this version so that we can enjoy Mark Wahlberg again. Marky Mark delivers his worst performance here since The Happening. Here, MM constantly milks two tired clichés — the failed nutty professor routine and the overinvolved parent routine. Of the two, I’ve come to loathe more the dad who won’t let his daughter have fun only to discover, OMG!, that she has a secret boyfriend behind his back because it requires bad acting from several sources.
Don’t worry, these bad story lines take a back seat when Cade (yes, Mark’s character is named “Cade,” which I heard as “Kate” for three full hours. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) finds a transformer — and not just any transformer, Optimus Prime! For some reason, Cade is actually excited about this. Cade is stupid. In this world, transformers exist and the government wants to end them, good or bad (and it does this by employing more transformers, wtf?). So being excited about finding a missing transformer is like being excited that your p
hone line suddenly has direct access to the Al Qaeda interrogation room in the Pentagon. How long do you suppose until your life is a piece of shit?
Speaking of pieces of shit — the film devolves quickly, as all transformers films do — into a series of hot robot on robot carnage. I’m not sure which is the more disturbing: the idea that all we want to see is CGI robot battles, the fact that the camera is hand held for much of them (I’m sorry, why would anyone have a hand-held camera for a CGI fight?), the awful stereotyped behavior of the anthropomorphic transformers, the extent to which it’s still kinda hard to tell good from bad in this film, the endless explosions as Michael Bay marks his territory not unlike a wolf in the wild, or the fact that “kindly” robot patriarch Optimus Prime constantly talks like a grandfather explaining why he sold his children to slavery. (“You humans left me no choice …”) It’s all bad.
I did enjoy one tightrope scene where humans have to cable from one high rise to another with predatory robots chasing them. Fact is this Transformers really is better than #2 or #3. And somewhere I should note that the first Twilight was probably better than the rest. And Norway was most likely the kindest of the Nazi invasions during WWII.
Stanley Tucci is wasted here. Why, Stanley, why? I gotta give it up for any actor who can keep a straight face while saying “Transformium.” Bravo, sir. Brav-o. I could not deliver that word without laughing my ass off. Really? “Transformium?” Bah! Even by the franchise standards, this is really stupid. And then we learn that Alien Transformers killed the dinosaurs. You want an actual argument denying the Earth is millions and millions of years old? Have Michael Bay teach science class.
Alien robots return for hello
Have a taste; it’s far from swell-o
The screen is pumping
With CGI dumping
While my brain is transforming into jello
Rated PG-13, 165 Minutes
D: Michael Bay
W: Ehren Kruger
Genre: Modern clunky
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: A six-year-old explosion freak with a great deal of patience
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: An actual transformer
