Wednesday, July 4, 2007

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: Transformers is pretty much exactly what you want in the heat of the summer--2.5 hours of mindless entertainment in an air-conditioned theatre, and we trot around the world (Qatar! The North Pole! The Pentagon! The Hoover Dam! Downtown L.A.!) and watch stuff blow up good (really good), with more than a few laughs along the way. Smartly, rather than assembling an all-star cast, the producers give the lead to Shia LeBoeuf, who cements his rising stardom with low-key charisma here, and toss in a hearty group of H!ITG!s and related character actors--Jon Voight as Donald Rumsfeld, John Turturro as a Man In Black, Kevin Dunn and recent Tony winner Julie White as LeBoeuf's parents, and Michael O'Neill (better known as Ron Butterfield to Sorkinites) in the Fred Thompson part (Bernie Mac also has an amusing cameo).

Interestingly, Harry Knowles, who you'd figure would be the bullseye for the film, didn't care for it, for exactly the reason I did. He wanted the movie to be more a story about the Transformers, rather than about the humans. It works precisely for that reason--it puts the human characters first (though there are at least one too many human plot threads kicking around in the second act). Also, there's an effing awesome trailer attached, which had me from the moment the big "Bad Robot Productions" card came up on screen at the start, and is the only time I can remember seeing a trailer with no title attached.

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