So, I just got back from seeing Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and with the amount of caffeine I imbibed, I’m not going to bed any time soon. Instead of pondering why I can’t have a car that turns into a randomly destructive alien robot (or just a yellow Camaro, for that matter), I decided to write a review of the film.

Michael Bay may not be the most artistically brilliant director, but he does somehow seem to end up in control of more money than the net income of various African countries on a regular basis. While the more visionary among us would use this money to make a powerful, moving film about social injustice or the meat and dairy industry, Bay does what the rest of humanity would do: have our favorite toys punch each other while falling through the air shouting, “FOR FREEEDOM!!!” in various goofy accents. To make a comparison, it’s the difference between building a replica of the Taj Mahal out of LEGO bricks, or destroying said model by driving your remote control car through it.

And really, I’m pretty sure that you knew that’s what you were getting. What we all want to know is: is the action distracting enough to make us forget that the film we’re watching makes no logical sense whatsoever? The answer is a resounding, “Shut up, this scene has that hot girl in it!” which, in layman’s terms, means “yes.” Bay seems to have learned from his past mistakes with Revenge of the Fallen, namely “having a plot.” He simply doesn’t handle the idea of a plot very well, beyond “major invasion by Evil Robots; military teams up with Unlikely Hero and Good Robots.” Someday he may be able to make a film that can be summarized as “stuff happens, and we don’t care why ‘cuz it’s cool,” which will undoubtedly be his magnum opus.

In all honesty, I’m not giving the film enough credit. Sure, it relies mostly on intense action to keep your attention, but it does have some genuinely intriguing twists in the plot. I don’t really want to spoil them for you, so I won’t describe them, but I thought they were fairly well done. Or maybe it was just the caffeine-induced haze brought on by the Mello Yello and cherry-flavor shot I had that made it seem that way.

On to the acting. I may be in the minority here, but I thought Shia LeBeouf did a pretty decent job. It takes a lot of acting talent to make it seem like you’re near constantly near death by robot or explosion (or ROBOT EXPLOSION!!!1!) for two hours. And his character, Sam Witwicky, is definitely in constant danger. He seems to be subject to what I’m going to call the Roland Emmerich Protagonist-Disaster Proximity Principle, or REPDiPP for short. This basically means that throughout the movie, the main character will be near every major significant event, explosion, and catastrophic meltdown that occurs, not only having to dramatically outrun them all, but somehow escaping mostly unscathed. You often see this in Roland Emmerich’s disaster movies, such as 2012, but it’s in full force in Transformers 3 as well.

The Transformers themselves don’t fare so well at acting. They all give excellent performances as Ford and Chevy products, where their major lines consist of “vroom,” and the like, but as bipedal robots they aren’t particularly impressive. Every statement is a one-liner, which fall into three rough categories.
· First: “America rocks!” Used by the Autobots when ripping a Decepticon’s face off.
· Second: “We represent the evils of a vague, unspecified tyranny!” Used by the Decepticons when ripping an Autobot’s face off.
· Third: “AUGH! My face!” Used by both factions whenever their face is ripped off.
Seriously, you are going to see a lot of faces ripped off a lot of robots before this movie is over.

All in all, I thought the movie was great for what it is, although I would like to see another director try his hand at a Transformers film. Bay gets hundreds of millions of dollars to make his films, and they don’t turn out badly, but I often think someone else could do an even better job with the same amount of money. Bay doesn’t always seem to realize just how much cooler he can make scenes, which I imagine is due to him having the attention span of a three-month-old. Goldfish. Often it seems as if he had ideas for three different movies, and then just went ahead and did them all. Someone with a little more focus could make something even better.

Just as long as Bumblebee is still in it.

I thought the ending didn't have enough closure.

That would imply it had a plot to give closure to.