I’ll admit I did less research going in to see this movie than I normally do. I didn’t watch the first three transformers movies directly before going. Quite frankly, I’d forgotten the movie was coming out until I saw a sign saying it was playing.
I should have taken that as an indication to avoid the movie, rather than a sign to see it.
The one praise I want to throw out there is, you can enjoy this movie even if you haven’t seen the first three. Wait, I have misspoken. Did I just say you can enjoy this movie? You will not, unless you are under the age of fourteen and enjoy playing with transformer toys. At the end of the movie I turned to my husband and said, “I think this movie was made for kids.” He replied, “I think this movie was made BY kids.” That really quantifies it quite well.
I really don’t know where this movie went wrong. It hired good actors, it had a basic plot ‘idea’ but beyond that, it felt like they planned the movie in a ten minute brainstorming session.
The movie started out, tolerable. But the angles they kept putting the camera at, annoyed me quickly. For some reason, the director thought it would be cool to blind his audience repeatedly with the sun. And in case that wasn’t enough, there were some explosions that also were positioned perfectly to blind you. We are talking about zooming in on two actors and having the sun pop out between them, in the most annoying manner. What was the point of that? I’d really like to know… and it was easily done a dozen times.
The dialogue just added to the frustration. We are talking simple lines like: “Those guys look mean.” “We are the good guys.” “Don’t you get it?” The characters are all stereotypes and cliques.
We won’t go into a plot, cause if there was one, I was too bored to bother figuring it out. But odds are, there wasn’t one. I think it was an odd mashing of subplots.
The one plus to such a big budget movie is it was shot on location. It was cool to see parts of China that you normally wouldn’t, and even the filming in Chicago was nice. When I wasn’t being blinded by a sun that is. (oh yes, that’s right, I’m complimenting the landscape… not the special effects.)
Overall the movie was a giant commercial for transformer toys. The LEGO movie pulled this off quite well. Transformer did not. Save yourself the three hours of boredom, buy your kid some of the cool toys and watch him play with them. I’m sure he will be more entertaining and original than this movie was.
mizner13 