Transfomers: Dark of the Moon Review

After seeing this movie, I can only say that Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a lot better than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I mean this, and I think that this will be the highest grossing movie of the year. But, it still leaves much to be desired.

First, the good about the movie. The movie was rather witty, with many tongue-in-cheek remarks that an astute viewer could catch on. No more jive talking Autobots. Brilliantly hilarious turns by Alan Tudyk and Ken Jeong. Tudyk played Dutch, the do-everything assistant to John Turturro's former agent Seymour Simmons (another gleefully over-the-top performance for Turturro). Jeong played Jerry Wang, a former NASA member. He did what Ken Jeong did best. Despite little screen time, he churned out the laughs with his sheer wackiness. And of course, the destruction of Chicago. The unbelievable destruction of Chicago was some of the greatest F/X generated apocalyptic scenes ever. Bay literally out-exploded himself on this one.

Now, the bad. Despite solid actors like Frances McDormand and John Malkovich joining the fold, the acting in general was weak. This was absolutely the case with Megan Fox's replacement Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.  Don't get me wrong. Megan Fox's Mikaela was not a great character. But Huntington-Whiteley's character Carly was not a suitable replacement. At least Mikaela looked sultry rather than vapid. Carly had one improvement. She was British. She was a weaker, less emotional, and less alluring character compared to Mikaela. She was another case of Michael Bay adding spectacle to the movie. I had trouble with Bay's directing. Though he did overuse cliched tropes like slow motion, I think that my biggest problem was that he could not focus. He would use unnecessary cuts and angles to make the movie seem more kinetic. But in my opinion, he did not need to. Just look at the battle scenes between the Autobots and Decepticons. Despite everything already going on in the scene, he added to the motion by jumping between battles. He never gave us a good view at what he wanted to show us. We wanted to see fighting, but Bay's erratic directing never allowed that to happen.

This was a very entertaining movie. But it wasn't good. This movie never drew me in. Instead, it took all of its special effects, all of its explosion, all of its fighting, and all of its spectacle and then bashed the audience over the head with it. This led to an incredibly detached experience. Even when there was supposed to be an emotional connection between the audience and the character, the loudness and showiness of the movie kept us out of it. But if you came to see that movie, you didn't expect something to draw you in. You wanted to be bashed over the head. That's what made it entertaining. You were so detached that you could enjoy it and then seemingly forget about it.