Transformers

A long, long time ago in the 1980's on Earth, a wonderful marketing ploy was invented: A toy that could transform from car to flying machine with weapons, and a television show that promoted the toy to youngsters. Now that the youngsters have grown up and are having children of their own, the audience for Transformers has grown exponentially.

That's not the plot of our movie, but it gives you enough background to plow through. The actual plot is terribly complicated (if you really want the complete background, see here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418279/plotsummary), and involves something about two alien warrior robot factions going to war with each other on Earth with humans stuck in between.

We walked out of the movie theatre kind of confused and tired. Confused because it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys here (if they're young, they're the good guys), human or robot, and tired because this is a looonnng movie.

It's long mostly because there are too many characters, again human and robot. We lose track of the characters, they come back, we forget why they're there in the first place, etc. I understand there are lot of people in the military, but why do we have to meet them all? There is a lot of time spent on young Sam Witwicky, and that's where the emphasis should be. Actor Shia LaBeouf is a rising star and proves his worth here.

Director Michael Bay interestingly makes choices to go back to the emotional heart of a scene instead of showing the rock-em, sock-em robots. This means, though, that the scenes are longer while he forces you to take an emotional stand.

If you've seen the trailers, you know that the effect showing the transformation of the transformers is just amazing. Quick, awesome, the way it should be. I sometimes found myself thinking about matter changing into smaller objects and the impossibility of all that, but shook the thought off and went back to enjoying the action.

Even though the fight scenes aren't elongated, I think Transformer fans young and old are gonna like this kick-butt movie. Well, there may be the occasional Megatron fans who whine that he doesn't get his just due, but if we talked about that, we'd have to go back to that infernal, complex plot again. Screw that. Bring on the autobots!

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