FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

The year is 2005 and in the outer reaches of space, the bad guy Decepticons have conquered Cyberton, the home planet of the good guy Autobots. Relegated to the moons of Cyberton, the Autobots begin working diligently on a plan to eradicate the Decepticons once and for all, and more importantly, protect the Matrix of Leadership. Little do they know a much bigger threat (literally) is looming. A planet-sized bot called Unicron (that can create new Transformers) wants both groups and the Matrix out of the way to fulfill his quest of controlling the entire universe. Things are about to get good.

Based on the popular animated television series, which is based on the popular line of toys, “The Transformers: The Movie” isn’t something that only fans can enjoy. It certainly helps, though. It also would help if you’re younger than twelve, or are able to put yourself in that mindset. Since the movie is meant to bridge the second and third seasons of the show, there will be a lot of information that gets lost to anyone walking in green. You’ll have to figure out who the characters are and what roles they’re supposed to play (especially the two humans). Luckily, that’s not very hard to do at all. So, forget about getting names straight and just sit back and watch these giant robots turn into vehicles and fight each other.

The film plays out like a TV movie. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad things is kind of up in the air. It’s good, because the show is good. The animation style isn’t very polished, but it’s still appealing because it looks like a moving comic book. The characters are fun, although I was getting a little tired of hearing “Me, Grimlock.” Why are you giving a mentally stunted robotic dinosaur so much dialogue? The storyline is pretty basic, but it works well. All the lame dialogue seems less lame simply because it’s a cartoon. “All we need is a little energon and a lot of luck.” “I’ve got better things to do tonight than die.” See? Those are cheesy lines. But put a great cartoon robot voice behind it and you probably won’t question it. On the flip side of that coin, however, that also means the heavier stuff has less weight simply because it carries the atmosphere of a children’s cartoon, like when lead baddie Megatron shoots one of the Autobots when he’s down.

But the really bad part about making a feature-length movie based on a cartoon and bringing it to the big screen? The overcompensation. I have no problem with them feeling they have to up the ante for what is obviously a bigger event. I have a problem with the execution and decisions they made to “accomplish” their goals. For one, they still made it TV ready. That means every so often, you’ll get a nice fade-in/out where a commercial can easily be dropped in. That means that they had a budget to buy bad music that has absolutely nothing to do with the series. It really seems like they created sequences just to showcase these songs – and it takes away from the battle sequences, too. I may like Weird Al’s “Dare to Be Stupid,” but that doesn’t mean I want to hear it in the middle of a movie about fighting morphing robots in outer space. The celebrity cameos were hit and miss. Leonard Nimoy – fine. Orson Welles – fine. Eric Idle? Really? I don’t know, I couldn’t get on board with that.

Still with all of that, the balance leans more to the fun side than the pathetic. The first half-hour is basically non-stop action, which is perfect. The movie tries to pull out all the stops along with all kinds of characters. You’ll see the likes of the Constructicons, Dinobots and Insecticons as well as some other cool new bots that fans should appreciate and embrace. But even with all these crazy contraptions doing their thing, it can be a little too much after a while. You start to think that maybe 30-minute chunks are really the right way to go. Then something else cool happens and you’re right back in it. Then a character swears and it completely throws off your game. Then you hear the new version of the theme song and you think it’s stupid, but still have fun, because you’re watching a cartoon movie about laser-toting robots that can turn into cars and planes and dinosaurs that fight each other. What more do you really want?

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