MOVIE OF THE WEEK (6/29/11): TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON
KEY CAST MEMBERS: Shia LeBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, John Turturro, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Ken Jeong, Kevin Dunn, Julie White and the voices of Peter Cullen, Leonard Nimoy, Charles Adler, Hugo Weaving and Frank Welker among others
WRITER: Ehren Kruger
DIRECTOR: Michael Bay
WEB SITE: http://www.transformersmovie.com/
THE PLOT: Set right after the events of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon now finds Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) as a recent college graduate who, despite having received a medal from the president, unable to find a job. Things are still sweet for sam, for he now has a new model-like live-in girlfriend in the form of Carli (newcomer Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) with a killer job assisting Dylan (Patrick Dempsey), owner of a car collection to die for. Sam's parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White) are coming to visit, though, so if Sam doesn't get a job soon, he's going to have to tell them the awful truth about his situation. And his two AutoBot live-in "pets" Wheelie (voiced by Tom Kenny) and Brains (voiced by Reno Wilson) aren't too fond of Sam's dog, either.
Meanwhile, the AutoBots (lead by Optimus Prime, again voiced by Peter Cullen) are working with U.S. government officials under the watch of Mearing (Frances McDormand) and Lennox (Josh Duhamel) to help eradicate threats whenever possible. Oh, in case you're wondering, Epps (Tyrese Gibson) has retired and is now working on another assignment ... Anyway ...
Everything seems to be under control and peaceful ... Until an attack by Soundwave (who is now some sort of giant metallic snake like creature) puts the government back into "uh-oh!" mode Sealab 2021-style. Long story short, it seems that the big space race between the U.S. and Russia in the 1960s was due to an alien space ship crash landing on the moon. And now, Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving), the evil Decepticons leader, want what is on that ship - badly.
Optimus Prime, however, knows the deal - for that shipped housed Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy), the original AutoBot leader in their civil war on the Transformers home planet of Cybertron. Sentinel Prime created a weapon that could end the war, but had to flee Cybertron before he could use it. Now, Optimus deduces, the Decepticons have realized he's on the moon and so is the weapon. (Following along so far? Good.)
What happens next? Let's just say it leads to a conflict of true intergalatic proportions ...
THE TAKE: Anyone who knows me well enough already likely knows the following two things about me and Michael Bay, director of all three of the Transformers movies: [1] I don't like the majority of his catalog and [2] I have repeatedly joked that he would be happier directing "adult" films where the "climatic" scene finished with an explosion, an American flag waving in the background and a loud, "we rock!" Aerosmith-like song blaring in the background.
Well, the ending of Transformers: Dark of the Moon starts with one of the four before ending with two more of those elements ... I'll let you guess which on your own. And if that sounds as cheesy/predictable/dumb as it sounds, guess what? It's even worse to watch it at the end of a 2 and a half hour exercise in excess and stupidity capped off by an hour of explosions.
Megan Fox might be a genius, or at least smarter than you think. Why do I say that? Because despite doing the first two Transformers films and Jonah Hex, she had the good intuition to say enough to get herself fired from the third film before she actually had to be part of it. For not only is she not in Dark of the Moon, but her replacement, Ms. Huntington-Whiteley, does absolutely NOTHING to make her role as Carly distinctive. (Then again, to be fair to Ms. Huntington-Whiteley, it's not like she was likely told to do anything other than "Be pretty, stand in supposedly seductive postures while wearing heels and a mini-skirt and say no more than three sentences of 'dialogue' at a time.)
It could be worse, however - Huntington-Whiteley's acting is nowhere near as over-the-top as the majority of the cast. Hell, when Tyrese Gibson is showing more restraint yelling as he does when he speaks - which is usually the equivalent of something like "Run!" or "Go, go, go!" you know you have a problem. For Julie White is comically awful as Sam's goofy mom yet again, Ken Jeong of Hangover fame stars in a bathroom scene that you'll either find hilarious or horrible and not only is John Turturro back doing his Michael Bay imitation, but now he's got Alan Tudyk and Frances McDormand - yes, casual movie fan, the leading lady from Fargo! - joining him to see who can out silly each other for the first 90 minutes.
By the way, if you think I'm letting LeBeouf off the hook by not talking about his acting, I'm not - it's just that I don't care enough and there are times when he at least tries and you can tell he's not just there because he thought it'd be cool - cough, McDormand, cough Turturro, cough, damn near everyone else in the cast - to be a big budget summer "blockbuster." And the less said about John Malkovich's performance, the better. Johnny boy, it worked in Red ... Here, not so much ...
I'm not going to even talk about the film's various plot holes, but let me say this - if ANYONE can tell me why the "deal" struck that leads to a major plot twist couldn't have been struck on Cybertron or wouldn't/shouldn't have been the first "plot" that was enacted in regards to Earth, I'm all ears!
Now, back to the rant.
The dialogue - and I use that loosely - found in Dark of the Moon can best be explained as falling into one of (#) categories: [1] Optimus Prime leader-speak that explains what's happening [2] Sidekick speak that usually consists of a horrible joke or two [3] Sam-speak or Dylan-speak that helps explain what's happening [4] Decepticon-speak explaining why evil things are happening and [5] Other humans speaking which consists of ******* in the form of horrible jokes or corny, "it's go time" verbal action jambalaya. Really sounds well-written and compelling, doesn't it?
But almost - ALMOST - all of it could be forgiven if it weren't for one man: Michael ***********' Bay. For all three Transformers debacles have come under Bay's watch - Ehren Kruger has only written two of the three movies, so his crimes are just slightly worse - and I dare say each has gotten progressively dumber. While he did remove the racist aspects found in the first two films (or at least I think he did), Bay's decision to do EVERYTHING over the top is what erroneously kills the movies and the spirit of the original great Transformers cartoon. For in the cartoon, the robots and humans alike treated the situation as if it were real, which made the show engaging.
Instead, Bay just says 'OK, this is a ridiculous situation, so let's just blow it out and make it silly until we decide to just make the fights big blowouts' and that's the wrong move. If he just had it in him to try and take things seriously as opposed to trying to inject comedy and use the robots as an excuse to blow up as much **** as possible, there MIGHT have been a decent movie somewhere in Dark of the Moon. Instead, we get a bombastic, long-for-no-reasonable-reason film made for those who just want to see giant robots fight and literally could care less about things like "plot," "plausibility" and "quality acting." To use a Batman movie example, it's the difference between Batman & Robin and The Dark Knight ... I rest my case.
PARTING SHOT: The final parting bomb in what has been an awful movie trilogy, Transformers: Dark of the Moon proves that when it comes to a Michael Bay movie, there's never more than meets the eye, just the awful movie you see in front of you.
RATING (OUT OF FOUR POSSIBLE BUCKETS OF POPCORN):
Comments
Post a Comment