Created 2007.06/30; Updated 2007.07.03
Transformers 2007

by Robin Rowe [More articles ]
2007.6.29

Rating: five stars * * * * *
2007, 140 minutes, directed by Michael Bay, starring Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox
Content: violent but no gore, sexy but no sex, no smoking or drugs, no F-word
 
Images Copyright 2007 Paramount Pictures		 Read the companion story, An Interview with Director Michael Bay.  
Transformers is the big summer action movie for 2007.

Transformers is the big summer action movie for 2007. If you thought Spider-man 3 was fun, but just too damn long and the same old story, you need to see this movie. In fact, if you wouldn’t dream of going to see Spider-man 3, you still want to see this movie. Transformers accomplishes something that few high-testosterone movies ever do. Appeal to chicks. My girlfriend sat open mouthed, grabbing my arm to whisper, "Look! Look!", during the whole movie. But, that’s jumping ahead…

The screening I’m attending is an advance press screening, which is a more typical reviewer experience than the rough cut screening with the director that I saw for Shrek 3. Transformers director Michael Bay didn’t make an appearance at the screening, but I interviewed him earlier. Check out my companion story, An Interview with Michael Bay. (For my story on the editors of Transformers, see the July issue of Editor’s Guild Magazine.)

As I enter the soaring modern lobby of the three-story Hollywood Arclight Cinema, a beautiful Amazon of a woman with an outrageously short crew cut is waving at me enthusiastically. It’s the Paramount publicist. My girlfriend Gabrielle is talking to her. Gabrielle, who cannot be happy unless she’s ten minutes early, nudges me on, "Hurry, get us seats!"

As I sit in the center seat of the first row in the theater, which is a fantastic seat at the Arclight, I’m greeted with a demanding question from the six-year-old sitting next to me. "Who’s you’re favorite Transformer?!!" I’m completely stumped. I’ve never read the Transformers comic books or watched the TV show. "Bumblebee!", he squeals. I’m rescued as Gabrielle arrives and exclaims, "He’s so cute!". The boy blushes and hides his head as Gabrielle tickles him.

Plot

...just your average teenage boy whose first car turnes out to be a sentient alien robot.
There are bad robots, the Decepticons, and good robots, the Autobots. If you’ve seen the Transformers trailer (and who hasn’t?), you know that Disturbia’s Shia LaBeouf (Sam) is just your average teenage boy whose first car turns out to be a sentient alien robot. What would otherwise be the heartwarming but dull introduction to the story of Sam’s family life and buying his first car is intercut with a huge alien robot attack on an American base in Qatar. For geographically challenged Americans, Qatar is north of Saudi Arabia and east of Bahrain on the Persian Gulf. Qatar, a former British protectorate, has been ruled by the al-Thani family since the mid-1800s, with oil revenues that give it the highest per capita income in the world. If you want more, do what I did and check out the CIA Factbook online.

Likable Las Vegas sidekick Josh Duhamel is captain of a special forces unit with sidekick bad-ass dude Tyrese Gibson from 2 Fast 2 Furious. The furious cutting from the captain’s story in Qatar to Sam in suburbia (not Disturbia) keeps the story moving. The hero goal for the rest of the movie is to retrieve the magical alien artifact and keep it from the Decepticons, who would use it to enslave the Earth by transforming our machines into an army of crazed alien robots. The plot is simple and direct, with built-in stakes and urgency. Perfect for an action picture. No time for weeping over breaking up with Mary Jane like Peter Parker in Spider-man 3. It’s go, go, go!

The Action

Battle tanks get blown around like confetti...
Within two minutes of the opening credits we’re in Qatar flying in tilt-wing Osprey transports (the latest in rad marine helicopters that look and fly like airplanes), scrambling F-22 Raptors, and under a big-ass attack. This is how an action movie is supposed to work. Director Michael Bay gets to play with all the cool military toys thanks to Pearl Harbor, which maybe didn’t thrill critics, but the Department of Defense sure liked. Bay doesn’t like directing it fake with blue screen like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The military gear is expensive and there’s lots of it, lots more than Apocalypse Now. It’s the biggest military coordination with a motion picture ever. Battle tanks get blown around like confetti, and the shit is real…except for blowing them up, of course. After all, an M1 Abrams costs $4.5 million.

The Actors

Robot movie fans will remember Shia LaBeouf as the annoying kid with attitude in I, Robot with Will Smith. I, Robot is another great robot movie and a DVD I’m glad to have in my very selective movie collection. Attention Shia fans, Spielberg has him in his next movie Indiana Jones 4. I’m ok with Shia, but in real life Josh Duhamel would take his girl in under ten seconds. Speaking of the girl, that’s Megan Fox, who totally lives up to her last name. It’s impossible not to drool at Megan, wearing a denim miniskirt, bending over to check under the hood of Sam’s temperamental yellow Camaro (protector robot Bumblebee). Megan is Mikaela, the totally hot out-of-your-league brunette next door, who Sam would have absolutely no chance to impress without the car. Megan has done some films, but until now was best known for her supporting role on the TV sitcom Hope & Faith. She looks hot and can act. Megan Fox is the total package.

Director Michael Bay kept throwing the robots back to ILM demanding they look more real.
Speaking of the car, I’d be remiss not to talk about some of the most important actors in any giant robots film…the giant robots. Director Michael Bay kept throwing the robots back to ILM demanding they look more real. Bay wanted the robots absolutely photo-realistic. The robots look amazing, whether flying through the air, burrowing through the sand, or running down the highway. The alien robots hide in plain sight by transforming themselves into ordinary-looking machines. The conversion process, from cars and planes to bipod robots, is mesmerizing and convincing. As we drove home after the movie, Gabrielle pointed to the big outdoor orange metal Picasso sculpture in Beverly Hills, "It’s a Transformer!". Actually, that does look like a Transformer midway through the process. The robots of Transformers are less anthropomorphic than Sonny of I, Robot, more alien-looking. Although usually incredibly cool, sometimes in the close-ups the Transformers robots did remind me of nerdy robot Number 5 of Short Circuit.

 

Even though I’m a guy, I’m allowed to call Josh Duhamel "studly" because that’s what reviews have said about him ever since he was in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!. "I want to see more Josh!", gushes Gabrielle. So does every other girl watching the movie. And the guys, too. Josh has that really likable, good-looking thing going. Like George Clooney, but ten years younger. Eleven years if you can believe IMDB.

In Transformers, Jon Voight is the Secretary of Defense. Although Angelina Jolie’s father seems a little wacko in all his movies, like Jack Nicholson, Jon always brings something memorable to a character. Jon was Nicholas Cage’s father in National Treasure, one of my favorite movies. (The poster of National Treasure is above my mantle, personally signed for me by the two Jons, Voight and Turteltaub.) Because the scores for both movies have a similar feel, I had to check that Transformers composer Steve Jablonsky wasn’t also on National Treasure. Nope.

There’s a subplot in Transformers with Australian hottie Rachael Taylor. She’s absolutely fun to look at and a great actress, but ultimately it’s a story detour than slows down an otherwise fast-moving film. John Turturro, as Section 7 agent Simmons, is a convincing dumb-ass government agent. But in the big battle scene, the movie fails to kill him, or even injure him…a break from action movie convention and a minor disappointment. Spielberg remembered to have the attorney eaten in Jurassic Park.

The Dialog

Screenplay by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman. Story by John Rogers and Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman. Story based on the Hasbro toys.

"Bought a car. Turned out to be an alien robot. Who knew?"
Like National Treasure, the film Transformers is an action movie with a lot of humor. Unlike National Treasure, the lines in Transformers are more corny than clever, but the actors pull it off. That a lot of the lines have just three or four words helps. The delivery is so sharp that it works to say stuff like, "It feels good", "I love my car!", "Duck and cover!", and "No sacrifice, no victory". Screenwriters who write wordy dialog should take note.

The Cinematography

Cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen was the second unit DP on Mission Impossible III. He captures the hero shots of Qatar and Hoover Dam, yet most of the time keeps the cinematography out of the way to tell the story. What you want in an action movie. Mitch had honed his craft as a unit DP on National Treasure and The Bourne Supremacy. There are no camera screw-ups, unlike Spider-man 3 that had a long scene with Peter Parker’s aunt May as a talking fuzzy blob. Sometimes in Transformers the robots are moving so fast that it’s sometimes hard to see them. Maybe Bay and ILM could have dialed back the motion blur a notch.

Conclusion

My girlfriend Gabrielle, who doesn’t like any action films except for National Treasure, started thinking midway though the movie that this is a film we should get on DVD. Gabrielle was wired on the drive home, like she drank two cans of Monster. "I feel like I ran a race!", she said. Myself, I feel like I’ve been through a sauna. The Arclight, one of the best theaters in Hollywood, unexpectedly had the heat on instead of the air conditioning. The theater had installed extra woofers to put out lots of bass for realistic sound effects from the helicopters, so perhaps the heat was for realism, to place us in the desert fighting in Qatar? In the theater it was pushing 85 degrees (29 Celsius) by the end of the movie. Transformers is so good, the audience ignores the heat.

As Gabrielle summed up afterwards, "That was fun!". That’s what an action movie should be. The six-year-old loved it, too. The movie opens July 4th, like it says on the poster. Wait, no…the movie opens July 3rd. Wait, there are late night screenings on July 2nd! Like the movie, the opening is moving fast and coming right at you. Don’t miss it!

Trailer: www.apple.com/trailers/dreamworks/transformers/
Website: www.transformersmovie.com
Opens on July 2nd in North America, July 27th in the UK, August 4th in Japan

Robin Rowe is a journalist, a screenwriter, and hosts weekly filmmaker events at ScreenplayLab in Hollywood (www.ScreeenplayLab.com). He can be reached at robin.rowe@movieeditor.com.