‘Transformers – The Movie’ (2007)

One of the great things about being into sci-fi/fantasy etc is that my inner child has never had to grow up and get a job in the same way that his real-life counterpart has. My inner child is a happy little fellow. He wants comic books? He gets them. He wants Star Wars figures? He gets them too. I really look after him and because he’d been especially good over the last couple of days, I took him to see the new Transformers Movie yesterday… We both absolutely loved it (although I found out that my inner child does not like jalapeno peppers on his nachos…).
The story can be (and will be) summed up in just one sentence. Giant transforming robots fight over mystical alien artefact. That is the entire plot behind a two and a bit hour film but do we care? No we don’t and let me tell you why. We don’t care about the plot because what we’re all after is seeing giant robots (that we played with as kids) beating seven shades of something out of each other on the screen. Michael Bay delivers this in true Hollywood style. From the opening scenes (Decepticons ‘Blackout’ and ‘Scorponok’ take on the US military) to the final showdown between Optimus Prime and Megatron, Bay uses every cinematic trick at his disposal to get the viewer’s adrenaline pumping and by the end of the film I was left in awe at what I had just seen. There is a lot of background history to draw upon (when making a film like this) so the issue of continuity was always going to crop up. By keeping the story simple I thought Bay side-stepped a lot of these issues, I was even happy with most of the more ‘modern’ transformations that the robots took on. There’s no arguing the fact that ‘Bumblebee’ looks a lot better as a Camaro than he ever did as a VW Beetle, same goes for Jazz in his new Porsche guise. I wasn’t too sure about ‘Soundwave’ being a portable stereo though, at the very least they should have kept his ‘cartoon voice’ instead the new one they give him… The only (very minor) quibble I had was that epic robot battles can sometimes be so loud that you can’t actually hear what’s being said. Having said that though, when you’re being treated to the spectacle of Starscream taking on the US Air Force (or Prime and Frenzy’s fight on the freeway) you don’t really care about what’s being said…
Without giving away the ending, things are left fairly open ended for a sequel and I reckon there will be at least one more film (I hope!). ‘Transformers’ is a great way to spend a rainy afternoon in London and (unless you prefer black and white films where all the dialogue is in Russian) I don’t think you’ll see a better movie this year…

Ten out of Ten