Review of Transformers (2007) by Maineutral R — 15 Mar 2014

Before its shameful sequels, this saga used to have a bit of dignity. This first Transformers movie has just too many fun elements to actually be as terrible as the movies that followed. We have our beloved Transformers, blowing shit up, fighting each other with incredible special effects and all to fill your 10 year old hunger for destruction. It still has some annoying stuff, but the movie as a whole it's OK. It fills just the right amount of details to be satisfying and fun, without feeling too much guilty.

The story is simple, the dialogue is average and some of the humor is odd and awkward, and the human characters are kinda boring when compared to the big-ass robots; speaking of which, the Transformers themselves are fun, they have those cheesy lines that everybody grew up listening to in the cartoons and their attitudes are loveable, even if some of them are purely character placement. I never thought Bumblebee was actually that charming, it was more like another painful and predictable character placement for me, but even that doesn't bother that much, he looks cool. Actually, this is a cool looking movie, it has great special effects, many explosions, good action scenes and the robots look cool, after all, who could forget that shot of Optimus Prime transforming from a Truck to a huge-ass robot during the battle of the city? That is an example of how good this movies looks. But then, what's wrong with it? Well, the writing is terrible, dare I say it. The story tries to have some kind of humor, but as previously stated it's awkward and odd, don't know if it's funny or not, but a glimpse of indifference rises all the time. The human characters are boring, but Shia LeBeouf gives some charm to our main character, this was before even Shia got lost, so that's OK. This movie's biggest problem is that the robots are the only good things; the rest is just average, and that does take note big time while watching it. Sometimes we just want to see robots fighting but we get 30 minutes of boring human scenes before that, and it's kinda painful. But, as also previously stated, it delivers quite a good time at the end.

Transformers could have been a lot better. It looked like a dark-serious movie, but ultimately it doesn't take itself seriously enough; but it also could have been a lot worse (it could have been like its sequels...). It's a fun movie and the only one in the franchise to be legitimately worth-watching for its few good details. It's not perfect at all, and almost overstays its welcome (it's almost two hours and a half long) but it's not greatly awful either. The good stuff worths and the bad stuff can be forgiven for it. Just have fun, this movie is easy to get on.