I Have Seen Transformers

And lo, it is sort of terrible. Which is to say, as a film it ranks somewhere between Star Wars: Episode I and a moldy bread pudding. There is an entire subplot with a group of hackers and John Turturro that could be excised from its two-hour-plus running time and no one would be the wiser. Plot holes abound; a Decepticon that levels an entire army base in the opener is later dispatched with comical ease.

But, oh! Those robots! Every time the robots are on the screen, with the exception of one annoying, chittering Decepticon goblin, you’ll find your digits clutching into an irresistible fist, ready to be joyously thrust upwards into the base of the skull of the movie-goer in front of you. The Transformers pose and posture, leer and smile, and generally beat the ever-loving waste oil out of each other.

The first third of the movie is surprisingly well put together, with Shia LeBouf acting like a convincing teen with a lot of genuine humor and tense moments. As soon as the rest of the Autobots appear, though, the whole thing devolves into a living cartoon. Not a tragedy considering the source, but all of the Autobot voices save Optimus Prime are so over the top that I found myself wishing they’d spent the rest of the movie pantomiming and mugging like Bumblebee does at the beginning.

They’re clearly setting themselves up for sequels—it’s not a sly nod or anything; they pretty much end with Optimus sending out a message to the rest of the Transformers that it’s time to scrap it up on Earth—but as long as LucasFilm can keep up the same level of special effects, I’ll go and watch each one. I expected anything that wasn’t the robots fighting to be crap, so learning that only most of the filler plot was awful was a pleasant surprise.