Movie Reviews: Transformers 3

Blaugh. This movie is like a train wreck. You want to look away, but you just can't.

Where to begin?! The girlfriend doesn't have much personality and serves no purpose in the movie other than to look pretty. I have serious reservations about the Autobots' "secret operation" to destroy an "illegal nuclear facility" in a nebulous part of the Middle East where they happen to speak Persian. It seemed like propaganda to me. At least half of the movie looked like a commercial for the Marine Corps. Obviously Michael Bay forgot that the movie was supposed to be a commercial for giant alien robot toys. And then there was the fact that it had a lot of pointless characters (John Malkovich, for example) and you could have fit the first hour of the movie into maybe fifteen minutes and not missed any actual plot. It's really easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys: good guys look vaguely human and are colorful, and bad guys have extra eyes and resemble animals, and are black (because bad guys always wear black). I think I can almost forgive Leonard Nimoy for being part of this film (he was a robot), but only because he's Leonard Nimoy. Also, various characters use the phrases, "Autobots, roll out!" and "Let's roll!" about seven times each.

Several times during the course of watching this movie, The Husband and I would turn and look at each other to say, "this is so dumb, let's turn it off," and yet we could not. We ended up watching the whole thing. By the time the credits rolled, we were left with that uncomfortable feeling you get when you eat too much candy and want to throw it all up. Except we didn't get to experience the joy of eating candy first.

For your entertainment, here is another review of this movie from the New York times that really tickled my funny bone. Reading this review is better than watching the actual movie:

"There are filmmakers whose work is characterized by thrift, efficiency and devotion to the subtleties of cinematic expression. And then there is Michael Bay, whose films are symphonies of excess and redundancy, taking place in a universe full of fire and metal and purged of nuance. I’m not judging, just describing."

I heard rumors that they are going to make two more of these. They should have quit with the first one, that was pretty good.