The Greatest Trick

Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit the earth. Or at least they appear to in Transformers. If they aren’t being recruited by the Pentagon to crack alien codes, they’re successfully chatting up the prettiest girl in school and diverting her from high school jocks. Director Michael Bay and his screenwriters have reinvented the Transformers franchise as a geek wish fulfilment fantasy, and in doing so have pulled off the difficult task of investing the film with a modicum of genuine human interest.

Though it pains me to admit it, I have to confess to rather enjoying Transformers. By saving most of the blistering robot on robot duels for the third act, the off-the-back-of-a-matchbox plot actually gives room for the surprisingly likeable characters to come to the fore. The main character, Sam, is a high school kid about to undertake that teenage rite-of-passage in purchasing his first car. However, his car turns out to be a gigantic robot in disguise – an Autobot, one of a group of good Transformers who are trying to stop a mystical energy cube from falling into the hands of their enemies, the Decepticons. Anyway, good robots fight bad robots and humans get caught in the crossfire.

Amid the carnage, there are several good laughs to be had, particularly a superb gag about Indian call centres and a hilarious sequence where the Autobots hide outside Sam’s window. Shia LaBeouf is an enjoyably unlikely hero, and much of the humour (some of it unnecessarily rude) revolves around his adolescent issues. Megan Fox does well as the winning love interest Mikaela, and reminds one of the young Jennifer Connelly. Elsewhere John Turturro has a fun bit part as an amusingly inept member of a dubious government extra-terrestrial agency, and Jon Voight blusters pointlessly as the secretary of defence. Leader of the Autobots Optimus Prime is voiced with requisite moral gravitas by Peter Cullen, and as his arch nemesis Megatron, Hugo Weaving provides a suitably evil rendering of one-dimensional cackling villainhood.

Most people will go and see this for the special effects, and they won’t be disappointed. Particularly in the final act, the intense robotic clashes are superbly rendered. As the robots jump through tall buildings, duel on the ground, in mid-air, transforming back and forth into cars, trucks, planes and helicopters, metal is crushed, explosions fill the screen, and much of downtown LA is trashed in a deeply satisfactory matter. I confidently predict a win for Best Visual Effects at the next Oscars.

This review is written through gritted teeth, because Michael Bay is responsible for some of the worst films I have ever seen. My usual complaints apply (whiplash editing style, too many close-ups, epileptic camerawork, unintentionally funny slow-mo shots), but given the subject matter, they are less of a complaint than usual. At the risk of being damning with faint praise, this is Bay’s best film, although I suspect it was executive producer Steven Spielberg who insisted on vaguely interesting human characters. If you are inclined to see this nonsense, turn your brain off, and make sure you watch it on the biggest screen possible.

Simon Dillon, August 2007.