Back in 2007, my friend Bill brought his six-year-old son Patrick to work on a summer day. He bought him a Transformers action figure, and took him to lunch, and took him to the first Transformers movie.
They got back to the office around three in the afternoon. Patrick was literally vibrating. “Tell Mister Loren about the movie,” Bill said.
“They put this cell phone in the box,” Patrick began tremulously, “and it came to life, and it had guns! And it shot at them! And it was like an animal, and there was this part with Optimus and Megatron, and Megatron picked up Jazz and tore him in half - ”
He was literally running in circles as he was telling me this story. Finally he ran to his father and buried his face in his lap. Bill looked up at me and said laconically: “The movie got Patrick pretty excited.”
Well, Partner and I just saw “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”
And I know how Patrick felt.
It is noisy and violent and very confusing, but it doesn't matter. There are these huge robots that are also cars and truck and airplanes, and some are nice, and some are bad. The nice robots are friendly to human beings, and the humans – the nice ones, anyway – are very devoted to them. And wouldn't you be? If a Chevrolet Camaro that could turn into an enormous golden humanoid robot with glowing blue eyes was nice to you, and took care of you, and saved your life repeatedly, wouldn't you sort of fall in love with it?
Yes, I thought so.
This is manic fun. There are good actors here - John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, John Turturro, Alan Tudyk – and some that are just nice to look at, like Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Malkovich has an insane giggly wrestling-match with a sixteen-foot Autobot; the scene would be homoerotic if it weren't so childishly innocent, and if one of the participants weren't a giant alien robot. Turturro is a maniac UFO expert / ex-CIA agent who spends most of the movie in a wheelchair hissing things like “We have no time!” Alan Tudyk plays a crazy Dutch mercenary who wears inappropriate suits but can still kill everyone in a bar when the situation requires it. And Ken Jeong erupts into the movie with his customary chaotic verve, shrieking and cornering Shia LaBeouf in a men's room.
It's been a couple of days, and (like Patrick back in 2007) I am still vibrating.
In brief, I have to agree with the New York Times's A. O. Scott: this is easily the best 3D/action sequel ever made about toy robots from outer space.
So be a good little Autobot and see it.
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