3 Green Fish

I’ll admit right here and now that I am not a legionnaire in the army of Transformers fans. I never saw the cartoon, or even the animated movie from 1986. I may have read one of the comic books once; or I might have just noticed it on the shelf and before passing it by, I really can’t recall. What I did have as a kid was a collection of Transformers toys, admittedly a haphazard selection, all of which were hand-me-downs, and I had a great time with them. So, when going to see the live-action Transformers film, I really had no expectations other than that there would be giant transforming robots.

And giant transforming robots there were. In great quantity, with quite impressive animations. The special effects in this movie are quite good, probably the best I’ve seen in any movie to date. There are times when I wished the camera or the transformations would slow down, as the speed at which things were happening tended to obfuscate the details at times. The one transformation that is slowed down is Optimus Prime’s unveiling, and that seems to take an excessive amount of time by contrast. Still, the graphics people did a very nice job here.

Honestly, what made this movie actually good was not the effects, although those helped. My favorite parts were actually the interactions between the human characters, and between them and the Autobots. There are some great scenes early on as Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) deals with the fact that his first car is actually a transforming alien robot. There are lots of humorous moments that result from the interactions between Sam and his car, or the Autobots trying to keep a low profile. These sort of things were done well, and kept my interest more than the gigantic battle scenes that round off the movie — in fact, I’d say the last quarter of the movie, while flashy and impressive in terms of action, wasn’t nearly as strong as the build-up to it.

Transformers (2007), starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, and Josh Duhamel, and the voices of Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving. Directed by Michael Bay. In theaters now (July 2007).

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