Crash, Boom, and Bay

At the 8:50 showing, there was a line. The AC in the theater seemed to have been busted (and right now in Louisiana its 81 at 8:30 in the am. You walk outside, and you immediately begin to sweat your ass off). There were the usual assholes who think they’re so important they can’t sit through a whole movie without texting someone; despite all that, I enjoyed the hell out of Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen.





I’ve looked at the reviews and yeah, they look pretty bad. The people who said the worst about the film seemed to have three distinct gripes: they watched all the cartoons when they were younger and everything is wrong, the story telling was sooo horrible, and it wasn’t “family friendly”.

To the “everything is wrong” people, first let me say this: put down your toys and get yourself some sex. I’m serious! Sex will change your life! Now, I understand seeing something you love on screen and feeling that someone just took the names of your favorite characters and made a movie with them. I’m a Stephen King fan, ‘nuff said. However, I’ve come to realize that movies are probably going to be vastly different from the material their based on (particularly in the case of movies based on earlier materials). Thusly, if I have a lot of myself invested in a character I’m not going to see a remake (you think your gonna catch me at the remake… excuse me… reimagining of Nightmare on Elm Street? Negative, Ghostrider). I’m not going to set myself up to get my feelings hurt. I can’t honestly tell you how close Transformers is to the source material. (I wasn’t Transformers girl, I was Barbie girl.) If you really want to know, ask a fanboy.

Addressing the bad story telling. When you hear the name Michael Bay, you should immediately assume that you’re not heading into sophisticated drama territory. In my opinion Bay is good at doing two things: blowing shit up and slapping a coat of gloss on old stuff making it tolerable for teenage brats with no attention span. Does that sound bad? Sure it does. But if you know that’s what you’re headed into when you walking in the theater, you can’t get mad. The story was easy enough to follow, the Decepticons are trying to do the revenge thing and kick earth’s ass. Again Sam (Shia LaBeouf) is tapped by the Autobots to help put a stop to it. He doesn’t really want to because he’d rather be off doing to college thing. Under the crash, boom, bang and robots, there’s the subtle transformation (heh) from boy to man. So yeah, the plot is paper thin, but that’s not what you’re supposed to be there for. You’re there for robots fighting and shit blowing up. Mr. Bay reaches his objective once again.

“Family friendly”. I hate that term. I took my 11 year old nephew to see this. I found it age appropriate. In fact the Autobots with the foul mouths were what tickled him the most. (And me too for that matter. When used appropriately, dirty words can be hilarious.) Now when I say foul mouth I don’t mean they sound like my soldier boys after a few beers. I mean there was a scattering of bitch and ass. Word is you can’t say fuck more than twice in a PG-13 flick. (Fuck… heh, I’m now rated R.) Now was this movie appropriate for 4 and 5 year olds who have a tendency to repeat things like parrots? Probably not. But that’s what the rating system is for. Ideally, a person should see that little PG-13 and say to themselves, “Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t take little 4 year old Timmy to see this.” But of course that doesn’t happen and these idiots want to bag on a flick for being too vulgar when the real problem is their too damn stupid to consider the rating.

The movie was funny and fun. I think that most of the people who hated this one just need to lighten up. Is this a classic that will be revered through history? Nope, but it was great way to spend an evening with my boys.