Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

***WARNING***

THE FOLLOWING POST MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS AND CONTRADICTIONS THEREFORE IT MAYBE UNSUITABLE FOR SOME FUCKS.

 ***YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***

I have never really been a huge fan of Transformers in any of their incarnations. I had an Optimus Prime as a child which I seem to remember never being able to transform properly. It came in its packaging as a robot, and it took me months to work out how to fold and twist it into its automobile form. In fact, now I come to think of it, I believe I broke the toy during that working out process and wasn't overly upset to simply leave it in the bottom of my toy box along with my armless Hulk Hogan and curiously stained Care Bear.

Even the cartoon neglected to impress my simple young mind. I already had Thunderbirds, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, Thundercats and numerous other awesome flights of fancy keeping me busy so the idea of squeezing in some talking robots that never did anything I considered funny simply wasn't going to fit into my tightly crammed TV schedule.

Despite this however I almost got excited about 2007's big screen Transformers adaptation and even enjoyed some aspects of it. The irreverent humour made me smile (not laugh) once or twice and the pacing was half decent to the point where the films many errors flew past me without leaving too much of a regrettable stain. Despite these factors however I do not consider Transformers to be a good film, not by a long shot and the less said about the atrocious sequel the better. So it comes of very little shock to me, or anyone else on the planet, that Dark Of The Moon fell quite short of my already low expectations.

What is wrong with Transformers: Dark Of The Moon? In short, it gets almost everything wrong. The longer winded version leads me to begin with the third time in a row this franchise gets the focus completely wrong. Now, forgive me if I'm unwittingly spending my time in la la land, but isn't a "Transformers" film supposed to star and follow the story of the Transformers? Yeah, sure the titular characters do feature in The Dark Of The Moon but yet again they have been sidelined in favour of the under developed, two dimensional, irritating little music video reprobates that are the franchises human type creatures. Shia LaBeouf finds himself, once again, undeservingly hogging the limelight while he, once again tries to make more of a man out of himself. His girlfriend, as usual, has very little personality and, as usual, has nothing better to do than to stand around and look pouty. I don't understand why we have to sit through hours on end of forced melodramatics and boring dialogue about the Transformers when we could be spending our time watching the Transformers themselves running around and knocking the living shit out of each other in potentially entertaining ways. Now I'm sure the reason for this shift is mostly a matter of budget and the fact that it costs a hell of a lot to put the ugly mecha men up on screen. This wouldn't be a problem though if Bay would calm the fuck down, laying what little plot he has on way too thick and cut his running times down to bellow the two hour mark, thusly freeing up the budget enough to spend on the robot heroes we all came to the cinema to see.

While I'm on the topic of running times, Dark Of The Moon is 155 minutes long. This isn't the first time Michael Bay has forced me to waste my time in this manner. Revenge Of The Fallen was 150 minutes, Bad Boys 2 was 147 minutes and Pearl Harbour was a staggering 183 minutes in length. Bay seems to enjoy taking his time in getting to the point in his films. Now, sometimes this is necessary in a film, The Shawshank Redemption for example requires all of its 142 minute running time to fully play out its meaningful, interesting story. However not one of Bay's films have the need to take their time in this fashion seeing as everything he puts out is nothing more than simple minded explosion porn. I'm tired of giving Bay a chance to prove himself. I enjoyed Bad Boys, I can even sit through The Rock without wanting to castrate myself with a potato peeler, but everything this simple minded, wannabe military fuck toy churns out these days can be and are best left well alone. Its about time somebody John F. Kennedy'd this mother fucker and put us all out of our misery. We've suffered this ignoramus long enough. 

As far as I can tell Transformers: The Dar Of The Moon has exactly the same plot as the previous instalments. There is a glowy maguffin that the good and bad robots want to fight about, if the Decepticons get it, humans will be wiped out. If the Autobots get it, humans live on until next time. That's the plot, and you win bugger all if you guess how it turns out.

Now, onto Dark Of The Moons better attributes, which, surprisingly it has a few of. Firstly The final battle looks pretty impressive and has some half decent pace to it. Granted it suffers from way too much human based action while the Transformers fight off screen but, as action sequences go its not a bad one. The special effects in the film and in this climactic sequence in particular are very impressive and should be applauded to a certain degree.

Another almost favourable factor is the absence of Greasy, Grubby Megan Fox in exchange for the less repulsive Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. It's only a slight improvement mind you, a slightness that I'm sure can be attributed to Bays now infamous, frat boy like over indulgence of "looks over substance" directing style.

A final plus point to this mine field is actually a backhanded complement towards the film being shot in 3D. I did not see this film in 3D, but as a direct result of the heavy camera equipment and technical inability to cut such footage into a speedy montage like sequence has forced Michael Bay to calm down. The shots aren't as shaky as Bays usual offerings and the editing actually allows some shots to linger on screen for more than a couple of seconds, something which I didn't mind at all as it spared me the usual "Bay headaches" I usually suffer from after being subjected to such things.

I do feel I should point out at this point that while the last few paragraphs of this review have sounded pretty close to actual praise, they shouldn't be mistaken for me recommending the film. It is never good to praise something for being slightly less shit than it has been. While Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon is better than its previous instalments it still falls way short in terms of actually being an entertaining work of cinematic fiction. I'd see this film over Hangover 2, Sucker Punch or Green Lantern any day, but give me the choice between Dark Of The Moon and forcing out a ten tonne shit, I'd take the bloody boxer shorts every time.

Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon gets...

0.5 out of 5