Less than meets the eye

>> Michael Bay’s Transformers update is a predictable pile-up of trashy excess

by MALCOLM FRASER

Michael Bay, the kingpin of the MTV-style blockbuster genre, seems a peculiar choice to revive the Transformers franchise—surely someone with less self-importance and more ironic hipster savvy would have been more appropriate—but perhaps taking this gig is a way of accepting that his true calling is as a master of unmitigated trash.

The opening of Transformers certainly implies this acceptance, with an Optimus Prime voice-over intoning “Before the dawn of time…” with Spinal Tap-like seriousness. From there, the plotlines begin to pile up on each other. The Autobot vs. Decepticon conflict takes a lengthy back seat to the travails of a misfit high school kid (Shia LaBeouf), a U.S. Army troop in Qatar, a team of computer hackers hired by the U.S. government and a 19th-century Arctic exploration mission.

If this sounds complicated, rest assured that Bay takes his sweet time setting up the multiple plots. The robot battle action doesn’t pick up until a good hour in, and Bay doesn’t shy away from introducing new twists and characters well into the final act. He makes up for this slow-building tease by concluding the film with an absurdly over-the-top, and seemingly interminable Transformer fight that destroys much of a city’s downtown.

Prime, the evil Megatron, ebonics-talking Jazz and many of your favourite Transformers turn up (though not, sadly, Soundwave, the ghetto blaster who would eject a tape that turned into a robot greyhound). Their transformations do look pretty damn cool, but they move so fast (and Bay, predictably, cuts so fast) that there isn’t much chance to get a good look at them in the two-and-a-half-hour movie.

LaBeouf basically plays the same role he did in Disturbia—a sort of metrosexual-era Woody Allen who stumbles and stammers his way to glory. The other human actors are mostly unremarkable (including recent Bay favourite Jon Voight, a long way from Midnight Cowboy but not so far from Baby Geniuses 2), other than John Turturro, in a mildly amusing role as a government agent.

Ultimately, it’s a Tranformers movie directed by Michael Bay, and as such delivers just what you’d expect: trashy excess certain to please pre-adolescent males and their aging fanboy counterparts.

Transformers is now in theatres

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