After the fiasco that was last week, I finally got to see Transformers: Dark of the Moon in all its 3-D glory. I bravely watched it at the same cinema because it was still the easiest place to get tickets. After months of seeing the trailers and that extra one week delay, I have to say... meh.
***Whole bunch of spoilers, but who cares really?***
This third and perhaps/hopefully final instalment of Michael Bay's foray into movies with giant robots opens with scenes of the war in Cybertron. A lone Autobot ship escapes with some super-high-tech-stuff but unfortunately gets shot at and crashes on (surprise, surprise) our moon. The film posits the idea that the US-Russia space race of the 60s was in response to this crash-landing on the dark side of the moon. Scenes are cleverly spliced with actual footage to show the moon landing as a cover for investigating the huge vessel.
All well and good, so far.
But not for long.
Then we get to the much less interesting Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) who is apparently still unemployed despite having saved the world twice. He has also apparently been dumped by Megan Fox who must have finally realized she was way out of his league. On the bright side, he has inexplicably landed another hot chick called Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). After too many scenes of Sam being annoyingly annoying, we eventually get back to the giant freaking robots. The Autobots find out that the US has been sitting on the location of the alien craft and Optimus is not pleased. They travel to the moon in a spaceship they conveniently seem to have made/bought/stole/conjured and retrieve what's left of the technology which turns out to be an instant wormhole generator system. They also find their long lost former leader Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) who invented the thing.
Despite being told not to interfere, Sam annoyingly does anyway and investigates on his own. Surprisingly, he finds out things that the military 'intelligence' were unable to find out themselves and so they let him play with them after all. An unexpected betrayal causes humanity to reject the Autobots and ask them to leave Earth, leaving us to fend for ourselves against the Decepticons. To make matters worse, Carly's boss Dylan (Patrick Dempsey) turns out to be as slimy as he seems and Sam has to wade into enemy territory to save her - and hopefully the world, again - sans giant robots.
Even more so than the last movie, this one suffers from incredibly choppy editing, jarring tone shifts, murky plot, silly dialogue, poor script, lack of narrative cohesion, and under-average acting. Speaking of acting, some scenes with Sam and Carly are particularly cringe-inducing. LeBeouf seems to be getting tired of this role or I just don't find the character endearing any more after two movies of him getting whinier and more fidgety. Huntington-Whiteley is little more than window-dressing. Ken Jeong appears so insanely over-the-top that the performance is only a little funny. John Malkovich has an enjoyable appearance. Frances McDormand gives an unremarkable performance. John Turturro is still a little amusing at least in his recurring role. The script doesn't do the actors any favours and features far too many out-of-place and forced one-liners.
The film is not without some silver linings in an otherwise dark cloud. Bumblebee is still adorable. Optimus is still cool. Nimoy makes an awesome giant robot. The effects are quite impressive especially the giant-evil-sandworm-from-hell. The 3-D effects are actually well-implemented and most of the show seems to have been filmed in 3-D. The film seemed not as dim as most 3-D shows. Towards the second half of the movie, the pace improves (not hugely, but better than the tedious first half). Some of the robot battles and other action sequences were actually quite fun to watch, even if some of the battles were too quick and confusing which is not helped by the Decepticons all looking almost the same.
While technically compelling, this latest instalment proves that the series could really use a reboot and/or a new director. They can keep the effects team though. Maybe put more focus on the robots instead of the unnecessary humans.
For technological achievement and for Bumblebee, I give this movie three out of 10 baby seals.
