Review of The Transformers: The Movie (1986) by Tex P — 03 Apr 2010

Transformers is utterly retarded. This film is so shit I can't be bothered writing a proper review, instead, here's a list of problems with it:

The writing is fucking terrible.

The animation is fucking terrible.

Transformers are an alien species. Meaning that they're born. From eggs. What the shit is that? There is literally zero way transformers could ever evolve. Especially not such diversely different species in such small numbers. Why would any creature ever evolve a way of turning into a car? Why the hell would an animal evolve so that it has doors and seats inside it? It's the most ridiculously moronic concept I think I have ever encountered in cinema, at least in films that take themselves seriously...

The film takes itself far to seriously.

What few jokes there are, are apalling. An example being "We've got to get a new travel agent" when the transformers are in a sticky situation on an alien planet.

Every single character is the product of a toy company board-meeting. Oh look, it's the pink, female robot to appeal to girls. Here's the comic-relief dinosaur-robots for children who don't care about po-faced action. Here's the human boy so that children can relate to what's happening.

The sound mixing is simply annoying. Every now and then, you'll miss a line of dialogue because they had to put 'robot' distortion over the audio.

The voice-acting is infuriating. A handful of people do alright jobs, but then you've got dozens of characters that sound like Scooby Doo villains and mis-cast celebrities dropped in for the hell of it. With all the flat, lifeless, 'serious' robot voices, who thought dropping Eric Idle in (doing his usual schtick) was a good idea? This film might be the first case of 'stunt casting' in animation -something which pretty much destroyed dreamworks animation's credibility.

For the record, I like Leonard Nimoy and Eric Idle and Orson Welles is always good for a laugh but they can't save this. This came at the end of Orson's career so you know it's on par with those adverts for printers and wine that he sold out for in terms of quality.

Half the time, transformers don't 'transform', they morph with the power of animation. What I mean is, they don't actually slot into themselves and fold out into a car or ship or whatever, they just sort of change shape because you can do that in animation and obviously it was too much work to draw robots actually transforming.

The transformers can fly. They have thrusters in their feet and can fly without seeming to turn these on half the time, and they can survive in outer space because they're robots. Yet, they need spaceships to fly around in? They actually worry about being stranded in space at one point.

The music is probably the worst thing in the film. It's like a The Worst of Bon Jovi compilation and it kicks in every single time there's a montage or action sequence. It's very annoying having lyrics play over the top of dialogue.

The best song in the film is by Weird Al; with the lyrics "Dare to be stupid". Very fitting for the film.

At one point, a transformer starts playing a message it's received through its chest-speakers. It then transforms into a boombox half-way through to finish playing the message. The sound-quality doesn't improve, the volume doesn't go up, all that happens is the transformer is now a big box and will have to transform back soon and is vulnerable should some of the bad guys jump out and attack. What was the point in that then?

Every time a character talks, they have to say their name and the full names of about 5 other characters. "I Megatwat will defeat the evil Oobernonce, or my name isn't Megatwat" sort of stuff. Presumably this helped toy-sales by reminding kids of what characters were available. Given that all of the characters basically look the same, it's quite handy too.

At one point a transformer is running underwater and he transforms into a car to go faster despite the fact that the film establishes that their thrusters work underwater allowing them to swim. A car would have shit traction underwater and would not drive particularly quickly. Certainly not compared to thruster-swimming.

The lip-synch is 50/50 as to whether or not it's going to fit.

Some of the editing is just weird. At times, it feels like a cartoon made for television with ad-breaks and the like. But this film was theatrically released.

One of the transformers has a little quirk where he's really quick. Except they couldn't be bothered animating him moving quickly, so instead they sped up the dialogue to buggery making him a more annoying character than Jar Jar Binks.

Another character has a chipmunk voice and speaks in rhymes. He's possibly even more annoying the the guy I just mentioned.

This film has the most blatant piece of exposition-dialogue I've ever heard: "What was that universal greeting again? Nevermind, I remember". Obviously he had to say it, but he had to refresh the audience that the universal greeting exists. Terrible.

Transformers are ridiculously easy to fix. At one point, a robot is broken and a big deal is made out of fixing him. Then some robots show up and just pop his arms and legs back on. Apparently they just click back in, with no need for re-wiring or anything, and that's it. So what was the problem?

Basically, this film is shit. It's everything you'd expect Transformers: The Movie to be unless you're one of the rabid Transformers fanboys, and don't let them convince you this is a genuinely good piece of film-making. I'd give it 1/10, but it's not as bad as Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (nothing is), so it gets a 2.

Personal enjoyment: 2/10.

Actual quality as a film: 2/10.