eye candy

Since I saw the first trailer, I was pretty amped up about the Transformers movie. I figured it'd be either one of the coolest action movies ever made or the worst piece of shit since the American remake of Godzilla. Over the past few months, my expectations wavered across the spectrum. But I was crazy about the toys and cartoons when I was a kid, and my love for nostalgia is just too strong. I just got back from Transformers, and I think I'm still a bit shaken up. I'm not trying to say that this was a remarkable piece of cinema that will change the way you feel about life. I mean, it might. And if it does that to you, I'm sorry; but what I am saying is that the last half hour or so left me rather shaken and in a paralyzing state of awe.

If you took a shot for every explosion in this movie, you'd die of alcohol poisoning before the second act. There was a scene where the lead character's father takes him to a used car lot to buy his first car, and even then there's an explosion. And if things weren't exploding, there were car chases, but those scenes usually just led to more explosions. I think in years to come, people who have seen the movie in theaters will end up being diagnosed with some kind of disorder like Post-Transformers Stress Syndrome or something like that. Symptoms include loss of hearing, chills and involuntary trembling.

Honestly, it was really good. It was pretty much the perfect summer blockbuster. The dialogue was triumphantly cheesy, Shia LeBeouf was kinda funny, Megan Fox held down the Sexy and the story moved right along very crisply. Even John Turturro was hilarious in a small role. I won't go into the story, because it was pretty basic. I mean, if you couldn't figure out what was going on from the trailers, you're beyond my help. All you need to know is that these robots pack a serious ass-whoopin'. A few years ago, computer animation had ceased to impress me, but the Lord of the Rings trilogy seemed to take all that shit to the next level. Though the third Spider-Man movie was a bit disappointing, I thought the computer effects were the best I'd ever seen. Transformers raised the bar even higher, because not only did the robots look amazing and interacted seamlessly with the human characters, but they also had a lot of personality which really sold the film.

My favorite was Bumblebee, because he was my favorite as a kid. I remember having the toy and transforming him so much that one of his legs fell off, but I wouldn't stop playing with him, I just had to stand him very carefully and keep him in car mode a lot. In the movie, Bumblebee's an old Camaro instead of a VW Bug, but the effect is still the same. He's still the little Transformer that could. He gets captured, he gets his ass kicked, but the little guy has a lot of heart and just keeps going out there, fighting the good fight. I mean, I suppose that could be considered just plain stupid, but "heroic" has a much nicer ring to it.