Saturday

I have to say frankly that Transformers was bad. As a blockbuster, I suppose I would rate it as ok, the special effects in particular were excellent, but there were too many awful or mediocre moments for it to raise itself above that. The dialogue in general was fairly bad, and the pacing uneven. It begins well, following established lines, but has one of its biggest exposition scenes five minutes from the end, which felt wrong. Overall, there were too many plot-holes to mention. It was funny at points, but in a predictable way. The teenage kid (who was annoying to begin with) after the girl (who was unrealistically attractive) was an inevitably bad sub-plot. There were slightly too many minor-characters, in fact. The NSA computer workers could easily have been cut. The targeting towards kids was on two occasions sickening: firstly, Optimus Prime introducing himself and his autobots with their special skills felt a bit like a TV commercial, and then when two of the Transformers are fighting on the motorway a boy in a car turns to his mother and says 'Cool! Mom!'. I think they showed too much of the Transformers too soon. As I was saying yesterday, there are too many special effects instead of a concentration on human reaction, so at times it becomes simply loud and confusing. At other times, however, I have to admit it was impressive and exciting. So, not entirely a waste of money, but not the best blockbuster of the summer either.