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Despite Michael Bay’s reputation as the hackiest of A-list directors, critical disfavor is unfortunately a moot point. His films are, almost to a one, review-proof. That is to say, their intended audience will never care about the reviews. If Michael Bay himself cares about the reviews, I’d wager it’s only for ego assuaging purposes. In a meta moment within Transformers, right after what looks like a meteor crash, he actually references his biggest hit Armaggeddon (by name!) as an example of the previous coolest thing before Transformers itself. So yes, his ego is hard to miss. The argument against Bay haters goes something like this: You have to turn off your brain to enjoy action movies! Or as my Zoom In colleague more diplomatically put it: “it takes an adjusted mindset to find fulfillment from a Michael Bay film.”  

Knowing this is expected of me, I’ll admit I was a little defeated right away as I sat down to Transformers. But I wanted to enjoy it. I did. When it comes to giant mother****ing robots aren’t we all little boys at heart? Michael Bay’s latest is but one of many incarnations of the story of a race of alien super robots who can disguise themselves as modern machinery like jets, trucks, muscle cars, and even ghetto blasters. Conceptually this toy line cum tv series cum movie is pure hokum. But that doesn’t stop the best popcorn fare from being great. So, I don’t like the notion that we should leave our critical faculties at the door for action movies. I know from personal experience that you can still have a grand time at any type of movie, while allowing your gray matter to function. I’d argue that it enhances your enjoyment… provided the movie is any good of course.  And therein lies the rub.

In the case of Transformers it’s not so much rubbing as crashing. This movie pummels you. And to be fair to it, it should: enormous alien robots, remember?! Transformers has impressive visual effects and appropriately metallic and assaultive sound work. In the sequences where it’s relying solely on those aspects, it does an admirable job for itself but you can’t really make a satisfying motion picture composed only of money shots. You might try but there’s got to be connective tissue.  Thankfully Transformers is blessed with a lead performance that’s deftly able to leap over its minefield of atrocious dialogue and land on his feet sounding natural (this Shia Labeouf kid really is the Boy Wonder of movies today) but the rest of the movie’s soul is missing. For 144 minutes I kept waiting for something to grab my interest beyond the intermittent simplistic joy of seeing a huge robot…or ten. And very little did.

Transformers has testosterone to spare but unfortunately little soul. The most authentic relationship in the movie is the one between boy and car, also known as “Bumblebee” one of the autobots. That’s right for the material but it’s undermined by the other clumsy attempts at emotion. Transformers does play at having a heart but the romantic subplot is just more aggressive testosterone again, content to dumbly ogle its main babe (an inexpressive Megan Fox). The movie’s casting and “grace notes”, for lack of a better term –- basically anything not involving the big machines -- fall flat or comes­ across as pandering. You can practically feel the suits with the charts and profit maximization plans sitting in the room with you as you watch the movie. They’re trying to cover everything: every racial demographic, every age group, every “type” to ogle (there are only two girls so they ingeniously go with smart blonde and dumb brunette to multiply the traditional options)

But back to the ‘bots. Strangely, the movie is often content to go for well-executed but familiar mayhem above Transformer specific thrills. There are lots of lovingly photographed explosions but when it comes to the robots moving in and out of disguise, it’s spare. The first time that our hero (Labeouf) sees it, for example, we aren’t given much of a view. That’s a shocking display of withholding for a movie so surface oriented and eager to blow stuff up.  And the transformations themselves, from robot to machine or back again are often filmed in tight close-up and at super speed. You can’t really see how one thing becomes the other, which is the engineering thrill of the toys that started the madness in the first place.

Even in the heat of battle, when Transformers is most comfortable with itself, it sometimes forgets the audience. The editing is so furious and the camera so close to the melee that you often don’t even know what just happened… or if a soldier is living or dead. Not for this movie the intricately choreographed thrills of battles that you’ll see in epics like Lord of the Rings. This is just straight up collisions. You and the camera are also crushed in there somewhere along with the robot pieces. You’ll have no idea where this chunk of debris is coming from or where that robot is landing when it falls.

The Transformers cornball theme song is rightly famous, a hoky wonder ­
The Transformers.
More than meets the eye.

The Transformers.
Robots in disguise The chief missed opportunity with this movie is encoded right in that theme. When you get a good view (and you’ll never get one for more than 2 seconds) you'll probably be thrilled. But the thrills vanish with the next cut.­ There should have been more that met the eye.