Review: Transformers - Dark of the Moon

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a movie made up exclusively of interjections, a lot of plot but no story. It is tempting to diagnose the director, notorious Hollywood hack Michael Bay, with a severe case of ADD, but there is so little variety to all the shit that happens in the movie that doing so would be giving him too much credit. I enjoyed the first film in the franchise, but it had some semblance of characters and a soul. In this hopefully final installment, Bay requests that his audience regress to when they were eight-year-old boys capable of being captivated by far more primitive stimulations. Uh-oh! Boom! Oh my God! Ahhhh! Hooray! — that’s all Transformers: Dark of the Moon has to say, even if it says it in a hundred different ways. Occasionally, there are gratuitous shots of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (AKA Megan Fox’s replacement) that require the mind of a 13-year-old to appreciate, but that’s about as mature as the movie gets. I like a meaty action flick as much as the next guy, but a meaty action flick should not require that I consciously render myself stupid to enjoy it.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon once again sees twentysomething protagonist Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) stuck in the middle of the eternal alien-robot war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Their latest über-destructive skirmish involves a powerful Autobot invention that Optimus Prime and company hid on the dark side of the Moon (unfortunately, the title is not a Pink Floyd reference). Beyond that, my understanding of what actually happens is not strong enough to concisely explain it here, because Bay presents it in a way that is incomprehensible. But this doesn’t matter to Bay, who clearly believes that viewers shouldn’t care about story so long as they are provided ample characters, set-pieces, and explosions. Indeed, for the film’s first 90 minutes, Sam interacts with an ensemble of nearly a dozen significant figures as he hopelessly tries to prevent the final-hour battle, which leaves what seems like every block of Chicago in ruins. (That’s right: like its predecessors, the movie runs two-and-a-half hours, as if to beat the viewer into submission.)

Even those who recognize Transformers: Dark of the Moon for the reprehensible garbage that it is may praise its visual complexity, perpetuating the fallacy that if a movie is technically revolutionary, it must be worthy. (This sentiment, which is essentially a misinterpretation of the artistic significance of Star Wars, may be the most dangerous widespread view held among moviegoers today.) Yes, a mammoth amount of work went into the look of Transformers: Dark of the Moon and it shows, but this doesn’t change the fact that said work was done in vain. Who cares about the seamlessly interwoven CGI of Transformers battling when it belongs to a movie that has no apparent reason for existing? (Please don’t send me e-mails arguing that the reason is ‘entertainment’; you’re lying to yourself if you believe art doesn’t need a purpose to be entertaining.)

Lastly, in regards to the film’s intensive use of 3-D, which studio Paramount hopes will rejuvenate the public’s waning interest in seeing movies through sunglasses — it is tolerable. Bay and cinematographer Amir Mokri use a lot of bright, overexposed shots to ensure that the picture does not seem overly dim, the primary complaint against the technology. That’s not to say that the movie would not have looked better had it been shot in 2-D on film (like the last two installments), but given that ‘tolerable’ is the most positive adjective I have used to describe any element of the production, perhaps the 3-D is worthy of celebration. Luckily, I need not recommend whether you see Transformers: Dark of the Moon with or without those pesky glasses, because you would be a fool to see it in the first place.

* * *

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011, USA). Produced by Kenny Bates, Michael Bay, Ian Bryce, Allegra Clegg, Matthew Cohan, Tom DeSanto, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Brian Goldner, Michael Kase, Michelle McGonagle, Don Murphy, Steven Spielberg, and Mark Vahradian. Directed by Michael Bay. Written for the screen by Ehren Kruger. Starring Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Josh Duhamel, John Tuturro, Tyrese Gibson, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Alan Tudyk, and Ken Jeong. Distributed by Paramount Pictures. Rated PG-13, with a running time of 157 minutes.