Transformers

While Transformers is a summer blockbuster to the Nth degree (think steroid use in Major League Baseball circa 1999-2003), it's a little too long in the middle (but lots of funny moments in the overly long 2nd act of the film), and it got really tough to figure out which autobots were fighting the decepticons in the last act of the movie as hell broke loose on earth. I didn't quite like how blurry (or non-distinct) the autobots and decepticons looked in motion, or the camera was always moving around them, causing ILM to blur them up a bit, but I got over most of that nitpick about 40 minutes into the movie. I did laugh when Michael Bay could not help himself by putting in a buxom damsel in distress in a slow motion sequence.

Even with such ambitious shortcomings, the film delivers a $10 ride like only Michael Bay can deliver, and it's almost to the point of viewer exhaustion by the time the ride slows down to the end, though it's a good kind of exhaustion. You won't feel cheated when you buy a ticket at full price and plop yourself into the seat for a 140+ minute thrill ride.

Shia LaBeouf brings some good old fashion humor and self-doubting quirks to his character of Sam, and he's the one who moves the film along, much more so than when other characters are on the screen, he's got a bright future in movies. Although Megan Fox was nice eye candy, but her character even gets into the fray in the last part of the film, proving she's not just a pretty face. Sam's parents provided some good comic relief, while Josh Duhamel and Tyrese's characters in the Air Force were simply perfunctionary in their roles.

The sheer amount of kinetics and bombastic action on the screen will thrill Transformer fans (I suspect some should wear some Depends when they go see the movie, it'll come in handy) and make new fans of them as well.

I give it 3 stars or a grade of B.