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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

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Given what a big part the original universe of the Transformers played in my childhood (the toys, the cartoon, and especially the original 1986 animated movie), it should be an understatement how big of a disappointment 2007's Transformers and especially 2009's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen were to me personally. Now series director Michael Bay concludes his personal live action trilogy with Dark of the Moon, and I find it to be an oddity as a film. While it still suffers from many of the same problems as the past two, it also shows marked improvement in a lot of ways. While I cannot in any faith recommend it, I still have to admit it's probably the best installment of the live action relaunch of the franchise.

picIt would seem that Bay and returning screenwriter Ehren Kruger have listened to a lot of the complaints audiences had, especially with the last film. The heavy reliance on odious comic relief has been lessened, or removed completely. And I really don't think anyone in the audience is going to be mourning the loss of the obnoxious, borderline racially offensive, Autobot duo, Skids and Mudflap. The action sequences also seem to be shot a little tighter this time around, so it's easier to tell what's going on. The movie even contains a few scenes that hint at some dramatic intensity, a nice change of pace from the past two films, where I never once found myself caring who was up on the screen, or even what was going on. Oh, and I'm sure as everyone knows by now, Megan Fox has been ejected from the female lead role, after she made some unsavory comments about the director in an interview, and has been replaced by a new girlfriend character played by British model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Those who actually are upset over Fox's removal can rest easy. Ms. Huntington-Whiteley more than fills the need for female eye candy, with an equally wooden and mostly unconvincing performance to match.

picSo, we have much less unfunny comic relief (though it still rears its ugly head here), and a slightly tighter plot that actually comes close to getting us involved. Where does Dark of the Moon go wrong? Well, with a running time of just over two and a half hours, the film is still much longer than it needs to be. It's kind of oddly paced, too. The first half of the film is silly yet intriguing, as we see a historical recreation (used with a combination of news archival footage, and special effects) of how President Kennedy's Space Race program was actually the result of an Autobot ship crash landing on the moon. This immediately got me thinking - Earlier this month, we had X-Men: First Class, that told us that superhero Mutants were responsible for saving us all during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now we have this movie, telling us that we went to the moon, because a ship carrying a giant transforming robot named Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) crashed there. I can't wait to see how Hollywood distorts Kennedy's legacy with toys and comic book characters next! (I have a mental image of Skeletor standing on a grassy knoll...)

picThis "historical alteration" turns out to be the first in a very long series of exposition scenes, as we rejoin series hero, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), and his attempts to lead a normal life, despite the fact he lives with a British super model (well, okay, she doesn't actually play a model in the film, but the way Bay often shoots her, she might as well be) and a pair of comic relief CG robots named Wheelie (voice by Tom Kenny) and Brains (voice by Reno Wilson). Much of these early sequences, which include Sam hunting for a job and being jealous of his girlfriend's handsome boss who seems to be interested in her (Patrick Dempsey) feel like they are unnecessarily padding the running time, which it is. Of much greater importance to the plot, the heroic Autobots have discovered the location of the crashed ship on the moon, and wish to revive Sentinel Prime, their fallen leader, who was on board the ship. They bring the robot back to Earth, and through a series of plot developments too numerous to recap, find themselves at the mercy of an invasion campaign by their arch enemies, the evil Decepticons.

picThe connection between the discovery on the moon, and the latest scheme of Decepticon leader, Megatron (voice by Hugo Weaving), I will leave to you to discover. I will say that by the point the plan is unveiled and the true action started, I found myself at least interested in what the movie was leading up to - A massive world-wide robot invasion of Earth. Too bad the movie turns out to be mostly a tease, as we see so little of the actual invasion itself. What we get to see is the aftermath, and boy, do we get to see it. Set solely in Chicago (where the streets are turned into a giant battlefield), the entire last hour and a half or so of the movie is really just one long extended action sequence of CG robots, explosions, people screaming, and buildings toppling. All of the action is stored in the last half, while all the exposition is placed upfront, creating a widely uneven and sometimes overwhelming experience. While the movie has a better grasp of plot than the earlier films, I still found my interest fading in and out during the exposition. And when the action finally kicked up, and just kept on going for seemingly well over for an hour and a half without any pause, I found myself exhausted, and not in a good way.

picTransformers: Dark of the Moon is a feast or famine movie, as I often felt like I was getting too little or too much. We see so little of the robots during the first half, they almost seem to be making a cameo in their own movie. When they take over in the last half, I started to actually get tired of them. That's just the kind of movie it is, though - A frustrating experience that never quite hits the right note. There is some fun here, such as returning cast member John Turturro getting some laughs without embarrassing himself this time around (no shots of him wearing a thong this time around), and newcomers John Malkovich (as Sam's new boss) and Frances McDormand (as a government official working as the a head of the military operation teaming up with the Autobots) manage to almost rise above their thinly written roles, and would probably be great, if the movie put them to better use. Many of the human actors are played by faceless extras, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be hard pressed to remember them, or their names. We come to see the Transformers themselves, who are designed well, but just don't look all that interesting, and usually come across as walking and fighting piles of junk.

picFor all of its limited improvements, the film still suffers from a total lack of wit, opting instead for the most obvious or broad gags imaginable. Most movies would consider the film's hero being manipulated by an evil robot (disguised as his wristwatch) as something terrible. This movie treats it as an extended series of slapstick gags, where Sam suddenly has no control over his arm. After three movies, I realize that this franchise is not really made for fans of the old cartoon like me. Sure, it's always great to hear Peter Cullen providing the booming and unnecessarily dramatic voice of Optimus Prime, and having it sound just like I remember it. But the movies seem more tailor made for younger kids and teens who want a lot of fast cars, a hot woman or two to arouse them and not do much else, and a whole lot of special effects and explosions that never quite amount to much of anything.
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Dark of the Moon is a lot of sound and fury that manages to throw us a scrap of plot or maybe an interesting idea once in a while. It's also largely being shown in 3D which, while not completely worthless, does not add a lot to most of the movie. The whole thing's really kind of pointless, but then again, so is this review. You know if you're going to see it or not, and what I say will not change your mind. If the first two worked for you, so will this one. If they didn't, there's better stuff out there.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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