Michael Bay Really Wants You To Like Him

3 things you should know about this movie:
1) The only reason this movie exists is to show off the CGI Transformers themselves
2) Shia LaBeouf is adorable quickly accelerating to hottie and that in no way undermines or devalues the fact that his performance is the best thing about this movie
3) Michael Bay sucks at making movies

When it comes to explaining my tastes in pop culture and entertainment, I am a man of extremes.
If I really like something or really hate something I can usually tell you exactly why. It's when things fall into the fuzzy, gray, mediocre area that I have a hard time being concise. Throughout the entire "Transformers" movie I found myself going back and forth between hating it and loving it, ultimately landing somewhere in the middle. One thing is clear though: Michael Bay really wants you to like him.

As it was with "The Fantastic 4", I am not a fanboy of "Transformers" either. So I didn't walk into this with a critical expectation of correctness in terms of the way they looked, sounded, who was fighting whom and why. All I wanted was to be entertained. If I have said it once, I have said it 1,000 times: I don't always expect a lot when it comes to my entertainment. Sometimes all I want is to unplug and suck on the Hollywood/CGI nipple for a few hours.
This movie didn't know if it was "Can't Hardly Wait" with alien robots, "Black Hawk Down" with alien robots, or "Men In Black" with alien robots.
Just when I would find myself getting lulled into liking this movie...it would switch gears entirely and I would start to hate it. It was all over the place! It was mostly in desperate need of a really talented editor.

The movie starts out with an awesome scene in the middle of the desert at a US military base. It's one of those action packed knock your socks off scenes that really had me thinking for a minute that Michael Bay wouldn't continue to suck the life out of everything that he touches. I was totally rooting for the movie at this point and things were looking good.

Meanwhile back in suburbia "Sam" (Shia LaBeouf who really gives a great performance and I personally can't wait to see him in "Indiana Jones 4", and did I mention what a cutie he is?) needs an "A" in his history class to make good on the deal with his Dad to go in halvsies on his first car. I really like Shia LaBeouf, physical appearance aside. He seems very at ease and comfortable in front of the camera and was hands down the best part of this movie.
Sam is firmly established as the school outcast and nerd. We get some back story on his Grandfather and a hint of things to come. We get to see Bernie Mac do his usual smart talking wiseass routine and we are introduced to Sam's protector "Bumblebee".
Sam gets his car, we meet "the girl" (a way overtanned, like to the point of Oompa Loompa orange Megan Fox) and the movie starts to move along at a pretty good clip.

The plot introduces a really weak trumped up "Government big shots looking to the nerdy computer hackers to help solve their security breach" story line that really only exists to beef up the running time and continue with the back story.
There seemed to be very little desire to allow any sort of attachment between the audience and the characters to develop. This might seem irrelevant to a movie like this, but later in the film when during some really lame "emotional" scenes we are expected to care about what happens to the robots and the two lead human characters, it becomes apparent that we were never really given the chance to give a shit about these characters.
After a few more desert battle scenes and some more money shots of Transformers kicking ass, it all starts to fall apart. The rest of the movie comes back to me in strobe-flash memories...and I saw it less than 24 hours ago!
We get to see John Turturro in a really oddly written, awkwardly cast role as a dude from "Sector 7". The requisite "Top secret government agency that not even the Secretary of Defense knows about".
Josh Duhamel serves as some yummy eye candy and does a good job. But his character keeps popping up out of nowhere. I kept forgetting he was even in the movie.
Its a bit startling and irritating how this movie goes from the desert, to suburbia, to the government HQ, to the arctic circle, to the desert, to HQ etc.
Tyrese Gibson acts his heart out, trying desperately to get a career out of the deal.
Seriously? What's gives? How can someone be so consistently forgettable?

There are so many scenes where Mr. Bay's need for approval really shines through.
In a scene where Mr. Turturro's uptight, buttoned down character is forced to remove his clothes we get the groaner of a sight-gag with him wearing "Aloha Hawaii" boxer shorts.
Really Michael Bay? A sight-gag of flashy, campy, boxer shorts? Really?
When Ms. Fox arrives on screen, you can practically hear Michael Bay screaming "Isn't she hot?! Look! Look! A hot girl! Aren't I cool?! Aren't you impressed?
We get "Optimus Prime" saying "My bad" when he messes up Sam's mother's yard.
A pet chihuahua who wears "Bling"and is referred to as a "Taco Bell Dog", an Autobot (whose character name escapes me) who talks in hiphop slang, because didn't you know that "The Autobots learned everything they know about Earth culture from the World Wide Web"? And a computer hacker who lives in his grandmothers basement and when taken in for questioning by the FBI breaks down hysterically crying like a little girl at the first sign of pressure.
All of this is so tired and hackneyed. Its as if the cultural cool quotient was culled from articles printed from 1999-2002. It's not cool, it's not hip, not current or amusingly ironic. The references that are used are way too outdated to even be tongue in cheek and self aware.

Michael Bay thinks that he is relevant and important to the entertainment world the same way Nancy Grace thinks that she is relevant and important to the news world.
Sorry Mr. Bay and Ms. Grace. You can both continue to insist that you are contributing something meaningful to the cultural dialogue, in fact you can shove it down our throats if you like. But don't think that just because you are still getting jobs or ratings means that you are actually good at what you do. If Mr. Ben Affleck's career has shown us anything, it's that in Hollywood talent doesn't always matter.

The scene that completely distilled the whole desperate feel of this movie is when all of the Transformers start to land on earth in the form of big meteors. We get quick cuts from location to location while the meteors are crashing down around the unsuspecting earthlings.
Suddenly we see the token fat kid (again Mr. Bay...a fat kid running around breathless from the invaders for comic relief in a sci fi movie? Really? You mean you are that original? Wow. A fat kid hasn't been used for comic relief since oh...I don't know Chunk in "The Goonies"?) Anyway... the token fat kid is running across the screen, video camera in hand, filming the chaos and destruction. He turns the camera on himself and says (I am paraphrasing a bit) "Wow this is way cooler than Armageddon"!
I could not physically stifle my groan.
It was impossible to.
I'm sorry, but you don't get to do that Mr. Bay! You don't get to refer to your other projects with a wink and a nudge. Trying oh so hard to be self deprecating and smug when everything you do sucks!
I know this little "gem" of a scene was supposed to be an inside joke. To elicit knowing laughter from the audience at how cooly self-referential it all is.
Duh.
But the thing is see..."Armageddon" sucked too!
Again, his voice rang in my ears during this scene.
"See how everyone gets the joke?! See how I am so cool and have this amazing established career with the movie going public that I can even make a joke about my work and they get it!?

I admit I am absolutely part of the problem. I paid to see this movie and in Hollywood if his stuff brings in the bacon, he will continue to get work.
I didn't hate the movie.
I just grew tired of Mr. Bay insisting that its a blockrocker of a movie when it was so lukewarm and mostly recycled.
Just like I don't want you serving me Larry King talking with Paris Hilton and calling it hard hitting journalism.

So should you see it?
Yes and No.
I would say bring a book, your Ipod or a video game. The majority of the movie is worthless. Even the effects felt a little strained.
Trust me that if you have to go to the bathroom or happen to look away from the screen for say, 15-20 minutes. You won't miss anything.
But a few key scenes were pretty cool and if the buzz of a franchise proves to be true, we can only hope that Mr. Bay will be miles away from any future installments.