What would be the key reasons to see the third (and possibly last) of director Michael Bay’s Transformers series? The first would be to see it in 3D (although this critic saw the 2D version for very good reasons), and the second and most obvious which is to see giant CGI robots hitting each other for the hundredth time. If you see Transformers 3 for those reasons, then we all must be in one long, dark nightmare! Sounds harsh, well, I haven’t even started.
If there is anything positive to say about this film it is that it’s better than Revenge of the Fallen, which isn’t saying much as that film was made without the guidance of a script. Shia LaBeouf reprises his role of Sam Witwicky, who despite having a glamorous new girlfriend (Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), is frustrated for being unable to find a job. Meanwhile, the Autobots find out about an old Cypertronian spacecraft hidden on the dark side of the moon. Thus the race is on as Optimus Prime and co. must find the ship and learn its secrets before Megatron and his Decepticon minions do.
Despite the promising teaser trailer that featured Apollo 11 landing on the moon and its astronauts discovering the mysterious spacecraft, all the interest is gone once the film starts. Although the filmmakers were able to remove some major issues from its predecessor (racist robots, Decepticon genitals, Megan Fox), massive flaws there are still.
With an unnecessary large amount of human characters, there is an awful lot of “goofy humour” that just makes you want to scream. Many of the supporting players are clearly here for their pay cheque as John Malkovich is downright creepy, Ken Jeong doing a terribly homophobic toilet gag and worst of all, Frances McDormand completely wasting her talent as well as getting a snog from John Turturro. Of all the human acting throughout these movies, Mr LaBeouf is at least trying to display some acting chops as he is indeed the funniest and most-believable from the entire cast. As a first-time actress, sexy Brit Rosie only does one contribution to this series which is make you forget about Megan Fox.
Once the usual problems from before are reprised, you end up getting annoyed to the point at which you just don’t care about what’s happening on screen as giant robots go stomp, stomp, stomp, etc. With the involvement of one screenwriter, Ehren Kruger doesn’t keep anything coherent as the story jumbles and eventually a twist would pop up without any indication of what just happened.
Like I said before, I saw the film in 2D otherwise I might have vomited, but I still received a slight headache. Despite the impressive visual effects involving transformers transforming and slashing one another, as well as some set-pieces that would’ve been perfect for a decent disaster flick, Michael Bay’s direction towards action is just exhaustive as best established in the Chicago-set climax that goes on for more than a half hour.
Despite my appreciation of the first instalment which had a Spielbergian charm, what comes after is mind-numbing terribleness for a franchise which is essentially a box-office cash machine. Bayhem, it most certainly is!
DIRECTOR: MICHAEL BAY
SCREENWRITER: EHREN KRUGER
STARRING: SHIA LABEOUF, FRANCES MCDORMANDM JOSH DUHAMEL, ROSIE HUNTINGTON-WHITELEY, JOHN MALKOVICH
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 155 MINS
Film Rating: 
