Full disclosure: I’ve never seen a Transformers movie, whether it was because of timing or just overall lack of interest… I just never have. On a more personal note, I’ve never been interested in Michael Bay’s oeuvre of work, for one thing he puts out half-hearted remakes (most of them anyway) of classic horror films and to quote Stephen King, his films are like, “a really pretty car with no engine inside.” I like some of films, do not get me wrong. I love The Rock and Armageddon for what they are; big, explosive and very pretty movies with soaring Harry Gregson-Williams’ scores but at times they can be overlong and undercooked. So, to find out that the Ginsu chef of editing was taking a line of toys and turning it into a ginormous movie (the second movie by the way, geared towards kids even at an overlong 2.5 hours), I kind of feigned interest. I had all but written them off. Boy, was I wrong.

“Transformers: Dark of The Moon” kicks off smashingly with history being sidestepped and tying in the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons floating in with the history of Apollo 11 and the gigantic governmental conspiracy that hid one of the more legendary Autobots, Sentinel Prime hidden on the dark (side) of the moon. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), our hero from the last two films is riding high on saving the world and getting a medal from the President. But, he doesn’t have a job. He does have a new girl however, who has an extremely nice job as an assistant to a curator at a car restoration museum. Sam is struggling between his heroism and the fact that the government will not get him a job. Bumblebee and the rest of the Autobots are off doing black ops work for the government and are M.I.A in Sam’s life. The Decepticons are deceptively (?) leading the military and the Autobots to the moon to find Sentinel Prime. Unbeknownst, to the good guys however, Sentinel Prime is tired and does not want to bow down to the humans considering they were gods on Cybertron, so he sets forth to bring his planet to Earth and enslave the human race.

Let’s get this straight, this is the best converted 3-D movie I’ve seen in quite some time. 3-D has taken a lot of flack as of late and I was quite skeptical until the Paramount logo flew across the screen. The opening war scene on Cybertron is immersive and noisy, it was something that if I was a kid, I would have been astounded. This film demands to been seen on the biggest screen possible with the loudest damn sound system ever. For the most part, the 3-D kind of takes of a back seat through the rest of the film until the hour-long (maybe more) set piece in Chicago at the end of the film. But needless to say, the 3-D does great work in regards to depth and tone of the picture.

There are a few negatives to the film, which we should most definitely talk about. First and foremost, there are scenes that have almost a car commercial feel to them; I mean for the most part it can be a two and a half hour car commercial. Another quibble is that there are parts to that come off as a music video. Check out Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s entrance to the film. It’s a low-angle shot that focuses on her ass. I mean, it makes sense but shooting her like she’s Tawny Kitaen straddling a car in a Whitesnake video isn’t really fair to her. Obviously, she tries like hell to pick up Megan Fox’s slack and she does for the most part. I really wanted to give her a fair shot, honestly. Then there’s the Chicago sequence. It is stunning and gorgeously shot as a giant mash-up of CGI, practical effects and choreography (not to mention that the 3-D really stands out during this part). However, and this is a big issue, it becomes very grating by the end of it. Maybe it has to do with the 3-D and the booming explosions but it just became numbing after quite a while. It honestly gets to a point where you begin to think that the film could’ve stopped right…now. The 3-D also makes things quite queasy after a while.

The humor quotient was apparently upped from the last two films and it was easy to keep the film rolling in between revelations of the story and action set pieces and during those scenes as well. Ken Jeong has a nice little cameo where he pretty much steals the scene he’s in… and it’s a scene with John Malkovich. Alan Tudyk, who I loved as Wash on Firefly has a great beefy role in the film as well. A more overall comedic element could sink a titanic sized film such as this but it honestly didn’t.

The script by Ehren Kruger does what it can and while the film sounds mostly improvised, at least with the comedy bits, it has a very interesting story… not that this film demands it. And hand to God, I thought that it was another favored Harry Gregson-Williams score but instead it was favored Platinum Dunes composer Steve Jablonsky emulating Gregson-Williams very, very well.

Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Shi LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Patrick Dempsey
Running Time: 157 Mins.
MPAA Rating: PG-13
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Nathan Smith gives Transformers: Dark of the Moon a B-

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