Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie-Huntington Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, John Tuturro, Tyrese Gibson, Frances McDormand, Patrick Dempsey, Alan Tudyk, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, John Malkovich, Ken Jeong. With The Voices Of: Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving, Leonard Nimoy, James Remar, and Frank Welker.
Directed By: Michael Bay
Well, we got rid of the slightly racist autobots with gold teeth, and replaced them with a second mini-transformer, who now resides with the decepticon that Megan Fox captured in the second film, and LaBeouf… because what Fox and LaBeouf had wasn’t true love. And she’s gone now. She’s gone so fast after the second film that she’s out of the picture before LaBeouf is awarded his medal of honor, which would presumably be pretty soon after the actual events of the second film. And for some reason… LaBeouf is raising Fox’s dog. I don’t understand why… since Sam Witwicky had his own dog for the first two films, which is now missing from this film. How awkward of a breakup was that? “We’re breaking up. Here’s my dog.”
Bizarre.
Michael Bay, in a misplaced error of judgement, believed that anyone could replace Megan Fox. Not true. You’d think so, but it’s not true. I’m sure that Rosie is a very lovely person, and her lips… are amazing… but her acting leaves much to be desired. She’s actually too hot for this film. She’s too hot to be with LaBeouf. Fox was kind of a dirty trashy hot that worked for her wrong-side-of-the-tracks character, but Rosie is clearly a supermodel. She looks, acts, stands, and talks like she spends the majority of her time on a runway… which she does. She hasn’t acted in anything since this, but is supposedly returning to the screen for next summer’s Mad Max: Fury Road. She isn’t really an actress, she’s purely eye candy. The problem with that is that if you give eye candy something to do, and they can’t do it… it hurts the film.
I never thought I’d be arguing for the merits of keeping Megan Fox in the business. Also, I love how incredibly silly they keep getting with Tuturro’s character. I have yet to see the 4th film, but I know I’m going to miss his trajectory. He now has a manservant named Dutch, who apparently used to be an assassin of sorts, and can hack into anything… but no one can pinpoint his accent. I would have loved to see Tuturro and Tudyk return for the 4th film just to keep this absurdity going. Maybe we can start a petition to bring them back for the 5th film, where Tuturro is now married to a female transformer, or something equally silly.
McDormand usually plays smarter characters. Here’s she’s relegated to being the government official in a Michael Bay movie who will obviously be very wrong. And Patrick Dempsey was cast against type, this time as a villain. I think he enjoys being a villain, he just doesn’t quite know how to be one. I will miss LaBeouf’s Witwicky, who is the heart of the franchise. He always committed 100% to the insanity of the franchise, no matter what he was asked to do. He really seemed to genuinely care about Bumblebee, a character he clearly could never see in real life and was 100% CGI. LaBeouf is a misguided person, but I truly hope he can turn it around, because I do believe he is a good actor. I’ve thought he had potential since seeing him in a Disney Channel movie called Tru Confessions, a long time ago.
This is clearly the worst of the three films. The plot revolves around a device that was smuggled out of Cybertron, found on the moon, and brought to earth, and the decepticons have been hiding it here since the 60′s, and we’ve been hiding Sentinel Prime. Yet.. we knew nothing about the alien invasion in the first film? Anyway, decepticons and humans have been working together for a while, so the situation looks grim for Sam and Co., especially considering the last hour of the film is basically one very long battle sequence. I don’t know how Megatron keeps surviving, but he’s here in this film too. I doubt he’s in the fourth, since Optimus Prime rips his head off, with the spine still connected. Very Mortal Kombat of you Optimus.
I had the least amount of fun with this Transformers, and once I realized the battle of Chicago would take an hour to finish, I already regretted my decision. Sure, the visual effects are good, but the plot isn’t, and the series is getting more predictable and more asinine in structure. I remember not loving this the first time around, but the second time around… I found more obvious weaknesses.
FINAL GRADE: C
PROPOSED GRADE OF A SPINOFF SERIES STARRING JOHN TUTURRO: A
