Augie Bytes

Before I went to see Transformers yesterday, I wrote a rant about the New York Times’ review of the Transformers movie written by Manohla Dargis. What the paper is thinking having a snooty avant-garde film critic review Hollywood action movies is beyond me. My basic beef with the review was that her focus was not on the movie itself, but more of a general pan of the genre. It was simply beneath her.

I’m not a movie critic (obviously), and I have no intention of trying to be at this point. So I’ll just attempt to go at it from the general standpoint of the New York Time “review” but I’ll do so from a less “holier than thow” viewpoint and let everyone decide for themselves…

“Big Boom. Big Badda-Boom!”

Those words, made immortal by Milla Jovovich in the movie The Fifth Element, describe the Transformers movie better than I can, which is exactly why it’s not a movie for everyone. If you’re not ready to sit through two and a half hours of constant movement and explosions, don’t go see it. If you think that the idea of giant robots that turn in to cars and jets is lame, don’t go see it.

Transformers was exactly the movie I expected it to be. Anyone who goes to this movie expecting to see Oscar performances is kidding themselves. It’s a science-fiction action-adventure movie staring CGI robots that seem to enjoy beating each other up.

I think it held up well as an action movie. The storyline, which I had read was a jumbled incoherent mess, was pretty easy for me to follow. Big robots lose cube. Big robot bad guys want cube back. Big robot good guys feel obliged to stop big robot bad guys from getting cube. Modern day Earth is the setting and the humans get involved. Throw in a teenage kid who has the hots for a teenage girl, a dozen or so stereotype side-characters (cool army guy hero, overweight computer hacker, etc), lots and lots of explosions and you’ve got yourself a movie!

I grew up watching the Transformers cartoon and I really enjoyed seeing them come to life in CGI. Hearing Peter Cullen reprise the role of Optimus Prime’s voice was a geek highlight for me.

There were two things that bugged me. One was the scene about midway through the movie where the Autobots were waiting outside Sam’s house. This was very out of character and fell short of the laughs it seemed to desperately want. The second was the seemingly slow reaction by the Decepticons to anything in the second half of the movie leading up to the final battle scene. This was a group that acted quickly and strategically at the beginning of the movie and then just kind of waited around for everybody else to catch up.

Bottom line, it was an enjoyable action movie. Don’t expect Shakespeare. Don’t bring your small kids. If your ears are sensitive, bring ear plugs. I won’t be buying the DVD, but I don’t regret seeing it at the theater.

I’m usually not one for reading movie reviews. Most of the time, I find that instead of being honest about what they personally thought of a specific movie, the critics tend to be too concerned with what their readers will think of them. So they spout off about the artistic breakthrough of some horribly tedious movie and then bash on movies that were simply meant to be (as contemptible as it may seem) entertaining.

But during my lunch break a few days ago, I sat down at a local coffee shop and there on the table was a section of the New York Times with a large review of the new Transformers movie. At least that’s what it implied with the large robot image with the subtitle reading “Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots…” Since I’ve been curious how the Transformers movie will be received, I decided to go for it.

Unfortunately, what I proceeded to read was not a movie review at all. No, what I read from Manohla Dargis was a jumbled mess that started as a brief historical review of the Transformers line and a few common facts about the movie, a grade-school level “boys are stupid” review of the summer action movie genre as a whole, and a list of people who worked on the Transformers movie with mentions of the other things they had worked on that she didn’t particularly like either. She then complained about things like female leads having large breasts and obvious product placements as though those aren’t common fixtures of most Hollywood movies and she was stunned to see them here.

In fact, based on the absolute lack of any detail as to the actual movie outside what anyone could have found in previous write-ups and in the trailer, I have a hard time believing that she didn’t have at least the majority of the review written before she ever saw the movie.

I personally don’t care if she disdains the very thought of a big-budget action movie being made, but that’s not what a movie critic is supped to let us know. A good critic should be able to cross the lines of genre prejudice, and watch each movie for what it is. Transformers may very well be a horrible waste of film, but I want to know that based on the notion that the critic actually opened there mind to who and what the movie was made for.

I have no idea what I’ll think of it myself, so I’ll at least add a comment to this article once I see it. For reference, I’m not a huge fan of summer action movies myself in general, though I do like some. I think a lot of them are indeed a waste of film including everything else Michael Bay has even directed. Some of my favorite movies include The Spanish Prisoner, Much Ado About Nothing, The Sound of Music, The Fifth Element, The Princess Bride, Adventures in Babysitting, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gattica, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Men in Black, and just about everthing Pixar has ever created. I like cartoons, mysteries, documentaries, musicals, sci-fi, you name it. They all contain good and bad movies and I refuse to listen to those who would bash an entire genre.

Rant over…