Transformers

Transformers was truly awesome fun to watch. Loads of robot-on-robot action and jam packed with cheesy humour just the way I like it. And the robots! Man they look cool. The sound effects were awesome too. I wasn’t a fan of the original cartoon series or comic books. I wasn’t an anti-fan either. I just never got into them. But I am a HUGE fan of Man vs. Machine Apocalyptica, and have been ever since seeing The Matrix. On this, Transformers certainly delivers, and on an epic scale. These robots are scary; even the good guys

Shia LaBeouf is excellent as Sam in the role of “boy entrusted with the fate of the universe but really just wants to go after the popular hot girl with a jerk boyfriend”. Megan Fox is appropriately shallow as the aforementioned hot girl with a shallow performance to match. While he plays “macho commando with token wife and just-born kid back home” quite convincingly, Josh Duhamel was slightly annoying in that all I could think was “Hey, that’s the guy from Las Vegas.” Rachael Taylor was pretty annoying as the “hot hacker girl who looks really dumb and surprises everyone by decoding the alien signal”. She was allowed to keep her Aussie accent, but I’m not it was the smartest move in a cast full of Americans. Speaking her lines with an overzealous urgency that belongs in an Aussie soap, she sticks out a bit and it makes for a pretty awkward performance. Jon Voight was pretty so-so as “defence secretary baffled by all the computer gobbledygook but still has time to talk to the hot hacker girl”.

So… Transformers is cliché central. I’ll admit it. But seriously, it’s all about the ROBOTS people! And the robots are seriously majorawesomecoolness. If you didn’t go to this film for massive shiny robot action and explosions and one seriously bad-ass villain robot who transforms into a fighter jet (how cool is that!?) then you’d probably be disappointed. I didn’t even mind the US Air Force propaganda but as a Stargate SG-1 fan that was never going to be an issue.

In conclusion I’d recommend Transformers to anyone who’s up for a bit of action. It’s rekindled my appreciation for epic action films. I’d put it in the same category as Minority Report, X-Men and I, Robot (which coincidentally also starred Shia LaBeouf).