Movies: Transfomers - Dark of the Moon

Score: **1/2 out of *****

Long Story Short: Transformers fulfills its promise of being the loudest, longest, most CGI-spectacular film of the summer so far. And that’s about it. The film is way too long and while some of the action is indeed exciting, it simply becomes numbing, even boring, by the end. Main character Sam is fun, as are a few new faces, but they simply aren’t enough to turn this behemoth into a good film.

The summer movie season continues to roll along! I freely admit, I realized I was not going to see an Oscar contender when I decided to go see the new Transformers film. However, the trailer just appealed to the “id” part of my psyche that enjoys large explosions and big robots destroying each other. This third entry in the franchise, subtitled Dark of the Moon (nope, “side” isn’t in there), was directed by Michael Bay and stars Shia LaBeouf. Here we go…

The beginning of the film asserts an alternate history in which NASA detects the crash landing of a space craft on the moon – thus causing JFK to declare the space race. Once on the moon, Armstrong and co. are shown investigating the craft during a supposed period of radio silence. Back in the present, the Autobots (good-guy robots) are helping the U.S. to keep peace around the world, and stumble upon some old robot technology. This leads Optimus (Autobot leader) to go to the moon, where he finds a comatose Sentinel (former leader of the Autobots).

Elsewhere, Sam (human protagonist in the first two films) has graduated from college but struggles to find a job. He has a new girlfriend, who supports the two of them with a job assisting a wealthy CEO. Sam finally lands a job, where a kooky co-worker manages to warn him of an alien conspiracy just before he is assassinated. This leads Sam to take up the investigation with the help of former government agent Simmons (present in both previous films). Sam tries to warn the autobots of the conspiracy, but Sentinel is awakened first and betrays his former brothers. He allies with the Decepticons (bad-guy robots) in a daring bid to enslave humans and Earth’s resources in order to rebuild the alien robots’ former homeworld, Cybertron.

As with many of these summer films, nuanced performances are not the focus, and this film is no exception. However, to start I will say that Shia LeBeouf, as the main human character, Sam, continues to be, in my opinion, a fun, sympathetic and engaging lead. His character perhaps throws a few too many brief tantrums, but he acts with an energy that is able to match the heavy CGI that dominates the film. His new girlfriend, Carly (played by model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) is, shockingly, even worse than the horrid Megan Fox. Why couldn’t they have just hired a real actress? His parents continue to be extremely annoying, though thankfully they have minimal screentime. John Turturro’s wacky, former Area 51-esque agent has worn his welcome by this point, but he is joined this time by Frances McDormand, who does a great job as the head of U.S. intelligence. Sam’s boss, played by John Malkovich, and his co-worker Jerry, played by Ken Jeong (The Hangover) are also both brilliant, hilarious choices, and are the highlights of the film to me. Finally, the obligatory U.S. soldiers (Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson) are as bland and cliché as ever.

Of course, the main thing to Transformers is the action. There are certainly some fun parts here, especially a chase scene on the highway early on; a brief but creative and intense sequence in which Bumblebee (Sam’s first car/speech-impaired Autobot) saves Sam while destroying a Decepticon; and a worm-like Decepticon destroying a skyscraper. But the last third of the movie, in which the Decepticons take over Chicago and the Autobots try to stop them, features a wearying parade of action that numbs you to the objectively-impressive computer effects. Another problem is that this film, like the entries before it, works way too hard to have the military be a key component in the battle, leading to redundant set-ups and “ambushes.” Most of the comedy is OK, with some good, some cheesy aspects; however, the aforementioned McDormand, Malkovich and Jeong and truly hilarious here. It’s too bad they aren’t given a much more significant chunk of this film’s hefty runtime.

***

I just couldn’t resist going to see this film: in part because it’s such a spectacle, and in part in the hope that it would improve on the previous entries. Consider me, overall, disappointed. There are two major problems. First, the film is way, way, way too long, at two and a half hours, due to a little too much exposition in the middle, an overbloated (to say the least) final battle set, and poor pacing. The second is that it follows the exact same formula of the other two films; all this one tries to do is do everything bigger and louder. Obviously, these movies ask the audience to suspend a lot of disbelief, which is fine. But here’s my small, fanboy-ish, rant: the Decepticons are always shown as fast, powerful, and smart at the beginning – but at the end, you have human soldiers picking them apart like they’re in target practice. It kind of ruins, to say the least, any sliver of suspense in the story when the big, bad robots, standing twenty-plus feet tall with the agility of a man and wielding missiles and guns, get taken down by some human commandoes with rifles (not to mention sliced through like a hot knife through butter by Optimus). It’s actually the human characters – at least, LaBeouf, McDormand, Malkovich, and Jeong’s – that give this film its small joys. Skip this, and wait for Harry Potter next week.