Transformers One (2024)

Admittedly, I'm not the target audience for this film, but I'm not entirely sure who it was made for. Kids who have no prior exposure to Transformers? Certainly not the adults who grew up on the '80s cartoon or Megan Fox's ass. This lighter PG animated fare is bright and full of color, but the CG character designs look dull and ugly. The anthropomorphized robots act goofy and incessantly argue with each other, interspersed with some inane and frantically edited action sequences that get tiresome quickly. The tone becomes slightly darker by the end, but I was already checked out by then. As a prequel to the franchise, the whole thing is just a flimsy excuse to show how Optimus Prime and Megatron came to power. There are no surprises here.

One of those movies where you contemplate your life in the margins while you're waiting for it to mercifully end. This one is strictly for the kiddies.

½ a solid REM cycle out of 5

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN [2009]

Michael Bay dishes out the "bifs, bams and booms" something fierce for Revenge of the Fallen, the second installment of the seemingly never-ending live action Transformers film series.
Shia LaBeouf is unwillingly dragged back into the war between the Autobots and Decepticons when he starts having visions of ancient symbols connected the rise of an centuries old foe known only as The Fallen.
It's an overly simple story that might have made an entertaining two-part animated cartoon but dragging it out for nearly 2½ hours without any thought-provoking substance is unbearable.  You know the film isn't worth your time when even Michael Bay has gone on record calling it "crap".  The highlights are the hard-to-follow CGI action sequences, insanely cool sound effects and impressive filming locations.

1 enemy scrotum out of 5

TRANSFORMERS [2007]

Huge explosions director Michael Bay aims for the hearts of 12-year old boys everywhere with the big-screen live-action adaptation of beloved '80's Hasbro toy line Transformers.
In the first installment of the film series, Earth becomes the battlefront for two giant robotic races known as the Autobots and the Decepticons.
There's a decently thematic Spielbergian story here that gets trampled all over with Bay's love of the military, juvenile bullyish jokes and shiny things that go boom.  There's supposed to be a lot of emotion in this story but it's hard to feel anything when clearly Bay knows how to speak better from his fists than from his heart.  Still keeping it somewhat simple, compared to the stupidly cluttered films that come after it, this one manages to muster up some mindless excitement and wide-eyed special effects thrills that scrapes the bottom of the guilty pleasures barrel.

2½ spectacles out of 5

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION [2014]

By now you know Michael Bay's Transformers movies are loud, brainless, void of any logic, flashy and REALLY REALLY long.
Age Of Extinction, the fourth film in the series ditches Sam Witwicky for the inanely dull Yeagers (played by Mark Wahlberg and the horrendous Nicola Peltz).  While the first film was really bad but somewhat entertaining, by the time you get to the 4th anything remotely fun is lost in Bay's ambition to wear the viewer out with stupidity, horrible dialogue and shiny things that growl & fart.
Flashy special effects are great for 20 minutes but nearly 3 hours of it tests one's patience as they reach for more aspirin.
I have no one to blame but myself.

1 Big Lebowski out of 5

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON [2011]

I walked out of the theater at the hour and fifteen minute mark of this shitfest. So I figured if budarc could sit through Priest twice then I could sit through this beginning to end.
I'm not sorry I missed the remainder of the movie, however I would have liked to have seen the final hour in IMAX 3D, with the exception of the final showdown which is a HUGE letdown. Giant robots fight. Things go boom in slow-motion. Plenty of ass shots...and that's just Shia's face. Victoria Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley gets plenty of exploitive shots as well.
As a CGI effect and sound effects film this is a work of art...for story, acting, direction and anything else is a steaming pile of shit.

1 "Missed It By That Much" out of 5