Transformers: Movie Review, DVD Review, Blu-ray Review (2007) by Christopher Smith

So, here's a surprise. The summer's first blockbuster action film worthy of its hype has nothing to do with pirates, living free or dying hard, Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four. Instead, it comes down to Michael Bay's "Transformers," a movie that clocks in at nearly 2½ hours but which nevertheless greases by without ever feeling as long.

Screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci based their script on Hasbro's popular action figures, the ensuing cartoon series and the 1986 animated movie. With Bay at the helm, what they have created is a sleek addition to a movie season that too often has felt as if it needed a transformation itself.

What "Transformers" highlights are some of the best special effects of the year — any year — with Bay impressively ramping up the action and paying reasonable attention to the characters in ways that suggest he wants to own this summer.

So far — at least in this genre — he does.

The film stars Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky, a genial nerd whose humor and likability are as key to this movie's success as are the Transformers themselves. Currently leading the charge as Hollywood's most promising young actor, LaBeouf ("Disturbia") suggests in this movie that there's good reason to get excited for the upcoming "Indiana Jones" movie, in which he co-stars.
What he possesses is the ability to be believable within the wholly unbelievable, which in today's far-reaching sci-fi movies is about as necessary a skill as one can have.

Here, the actor navigates a plot that finds Earth under attack by the Decepticons, huge robots in search of the Allspark, a giant cube that, if found, will allow these beasts the devastating powers of evil they seek. Working against them are the Autobots, who also are seeking the Allspark but who instead want to use its power for good.

Since neither the Decepticons nor the Autobots know where the Allspark is located on Earth, all hell is unleashed in their effort to find it, with Sam eventually learning through his unlikely relationship with the Autobots (he purchased an old Camaro that happens to be the Autobot Bumblebee) that he alone has the key to its discovery.

For romantic interest, the movie offers up Mikaela (Megan Fox), who has a hot bod and a crooked past. For a subplot, Bay sends us to Qatar, where the Decepticons first attack while U.S. soldiers (Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson among them) work to fend them off. Also onboard is Anthony Anderson as a computer junkie, John Voight as the blustering secretary of defense and John Turturro as a secret agent who knows where the Allspark is held — and where the killer robot Megatron is kept frozen on ice, as well.

Naturally, the stars of the show are the Transformers themselves, whose incorporation into the film's real-life surroundings is as seamless a feat as you could imagine. Watching them go through their gear-grinding motions of change — whether it's into the new Camaro, a semi, a fighter plane or a Pontiac Solstice — initially seems so chaotic, you question whether the transformation makes physical sense. But since there's no tricking this crowd, what you notice, the closer you watch, is that every wheel, every brake light, every part finds its place to create something towering, robotic and new.

Incredibly, it all just fits together, not unlike the movie itself.

Grade: B+