A Movie Review

Well, it's summertime, and so journalistic ethics demands from every writer a movie review.
My brother and I took the 30-mile drive to the theater up in Crested Butte from Gunnison, and found ourselves at the end of memory lane. We caught the 5 o'clock showing -- there were maybe 8 people in the theater, but I was surprised that we were not completely surrounded by other 20- to 30-year-old guys, spending a Tuesday evening reliving Saturday mornings many years ago.
Michael Bay's new unleashing of chaos on earth comes to us from Cybertron via Hollywood. Transformers is a glorious summer action movie -- it is, in a word, rad. The plot is, how shall I say it, complicated yet undistracting. Robots land on earth and start raising hell looking for a powerful cube. This cube can do some seriously bodacious cool stuff. The Decepticons want to exterminate the human race in the process of finding this cube; the Autobots want victory and the avoidance of civilian casualties, and plan to leave Earth when their mission is completed. There are some secret government agents and some military guys holed up in the Hoover Dam. None of this really matters. The dorky kid with the killer car gets the totally rad babe at the end. He is played by Shia LeBoeuf, she is played by Megan Cox. Both are acceptable.

Peter Cullen comes back as Optimus Prime, and still sounds like a noble tractor trailer should. "Freedom is the right of every sentient being" continues to be a great (and true) statement, even if it comes from a 20-year-old robot toy.

John Tuturro is over-the-top as a secret government agent, and mysterious without being sinister. This is perhaps a reversal of his role as Jesus in The Big Lebowski, where he was sinister without being mysterious. He has a great tendency to overact the part.

Of course, everyone overacts in this movie. The powerful cube overacts. All the CGI robots overact. Even the scenery overacts. But that's sort of the point. This film is not meant to be subtle. It is a combination of Saturday-morning Froot Loops nostalgia, teenage 80s-pop-culture history lesson, blockbuster action film, and product-placement clinic.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is that Transformers began essentially as a 30-minute advertisement for toys. It is now a 2-hour, 30- minute advertisement for some different toys. The transition from advertisement to cult phenomenon to advertisement is brilliant.

Transformers is not a "good" movie, but it is awesome.