July 05, 2007

Film Critic Quote of the Day

Jonathan Last encapsulates everything I feel about "Transformers":

Overall, the movie is a mess. A glorious, amazing mess. I don't think I could recapitulate the plot for you because it made almost no sense. Enormous chunks of the story are either preposterous, contradictory, or completely unnecessary. Of the three main groups of humans the story follows, you could have cut one of them out entirely (the plucky NSA analysts) and missed absolutely nothing.

Many of the action sequences are basically incomprehensible. Also, the dialogue is laughable more often than not. And Michael Bay has grounded the movie so deeply in the present--jokes about Armageddon, references to eBay--that there is little chance of it holding up a decade from now the way, say, Jurassic Park does.

Yet, I liked it less than he did. Clearly, the Transformers themselves looked awesome, and the effects were something to behold. Shia was good, and John Turturro stole all of his scenes.

But other than that- it failed on just about every level. The plot was nonsense, the action sequences were impossible to follow, the characters (whether human or robot) total cyphers, and the humor fell flat just about all across the board. Oh, and no one in the film- not the soldiers, not the news anchors, and not even the secretary of defense- knows how to correctly pronounce "Qatar."

It's really too bad; with a halfway-decent script and a non-imbecile director, this could have been an all-time-great action movie.

I once again ask: Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?

Posted by Stephen Silver at July 5, 2007 04:40 PM
Comments

I refuse to watch a Transformers movie which doesn't feature the vocal talent of Judd Nelson, or the musical stylings of Stan Bush.

Posted by: Tainted Bill at July 6, 2007 06:27 AM

Bill, I watched that one last night. Sadly, it wasn't as good as my 7-year-old self remembered.

Posted by: Jeremy at July 6, 2007 09:29 AM

I watched a bit of it last night too, skipping around to the parts I still enjoy, most of which involved Grimlock. It isn't a very good movie, but I like the memories it conjures up. Like how Hot Rod was an awesome toy.

Posted by: Tainted Bill at July 6, 2007 11:29 AM

Kinda' sad, too, that Orson Welles' last role was as Unicron.

Posted by: Dave J at July 7, 2007 10:17 AM

Is Shia Shia or Sunni?

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