Review

Review Date: 8-July-07
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Transformers (2007)

The first half of "Transformers" is transcendent for those who love the summer apocalypse flick. With precision and humor it sets up the players required for its genre and release date on the Fourth of July. At the forefront is a lovable misfit absurdly named Sam Witwicky (doe-eyed Shia LaBeouf), who is smitten with a bruiser's girlfriend (Megan Fox). Her teen hooker wear conceals little but a heart of gold. In gas-guzzling tradition, Sam begins the passage into manhood by purchasing a beat-up Camaro; or rather, a beat-up Camaro convinces Sam to buy it when his doofus father takes him to a resale lot. Almost immediately, the car enables the boy to attract the girl's attention. Then it begins to exhibit a mind of its own, particularly as regards the radio. And then it morphs into a giant alien robot.

Meanwhile, a doughty band of U.S. soldiers led by a nice guy who misses his wife and baby (Josh Duhamel) escapes a giant robot attack in Qatar, which captures the attention of the Pentagon and Secretary of Defense (Jon Voight). National security is breached, the president runs out of Ding Dongs on Air Force One, and the feds try to stem a meltdown of global communications by calling in the country's biggest nerds (including one played by Rachael Taylor, who resembles Nicole Kidman rather than someone knee-deep in quantum physics). We got cars, chicks, underdogs, Earth in peril, and the military with big, loud weapons, all the makings of a frivolous filmish firecracker. But the second half of "Transformers," ah, changes into something less grand.

It's not enough to ruin the experience, but the bringing together of the characters for the showdown plays like a hurried muddle punctuated by skillful special effects. The first problem for me, at least (fans of the old cartoon might feel otherwise), is that the robots start to talk. I had been digging the silently growing bond between Sam and his transforming car, but the idea of the towering creatures becomes cheesy when others show up and greet him with American dialects and attitudes picked up on the World Wide Web (and indicative of their origin as children's toys). At least their leader, Optimus Prime, talks with a majestic purr as he relates how the good guys of their race are competing against the bad guys for an energy cube that could destroy mankind.

This being the case, the goals of the plot are simple: protect the cube, pile on the robot violence, and get Sam laid. Simplicity is good in such a movie, yet these goals, and the resurrection of the evil Megatron, render the nerds, the soldiers, and a wacky secret agent (John Turturro) regrettably superfluous. (Though not as superfluous as the blacks in the movie, who are all shameless tokens.) As the humans flounder around with vague intent, we see eye-popping scenes of robots wheeling, stomping, and soaring through a city. This is why we contribute to the huge summer box office, so from its more-than-adequate beginning "Transformers" turns out okay.

Copyright © 2007 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.