Past Its Prime

Transformers is less than meets the eye.

by Shaun Brady

To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, no one ever went broke underestimating the mind-set of the 12-year-old boy. Judging by the cheers that greeted every appearance of heroic semi-trailer/robot Optimus Prime and the gushing standing ovation following the screening I attended, Hasbro execs may as well start shopping for solid gold back scratchers and money-burning fireplaces right now. They've got a gargantuan franchise on their hands.

Of course, 12-year-old boys come in plenty of shapes and sizes � besides the actual preteens, there's always one lurking in the breast of every frat boy and middle-aged man. Those inner adolescents predominated here, enthusiasm driven at least as much by nostalgia as by the clamor onscreen.

There's no more prominent case of arrested development than Michael Bay, who steers this behemoth between his typical poles of over-amplified action and juvenile humor. The first two-thirds of the film, in fact, are either played for laughs or just plain laughable � the first words bellowed by an evil giant robot inquire into the location of an eBay item. The purposeful humor is even worse, stopping action scenes dead to trot out jokes about Indian tech support or a very W-sounding president requesting Ding-Dongs.

For all of the love given by the enthusiastic crowd, the heroes themselves aren't treated with much respect. Hell, as kiddie-oriented as the Toho monsters became, even Mechagodzilla was never subjected to a piss joke � Transformers has two. Even the dignified Optimus Prime (nobly voiced by Peter Cullen, reprising his role from the original animated film and series) is played as a buffoon, hiding from his teen compatriot's parents in an excruciatingly long comic scene.

Shia LaBeouf plays his usual nonthreatening awkward hero (presumably cast as a sop to all of those girlfriends dragged along to the theater), whose Arctic explorer great-great-grandfather discovered the evil Megatron (voiced by a snarling Hugo Weaving), instigator of a war that devastated the Transformers' home planet of Cybertron, had come to Earth in search of the source of their existence � the Allspark, a giant cosmic Rubik's Cube with the power to endow life. LaBeouf puts his ancestor's belongings on eBay, where the glasses are spotted by the Internet-monitoring Transformers.

'BOT OF ALL JOKES: Optimus Prime leads his team into battle. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

LaBeouf is tracked down by the heroic Autobots and the villainous Decepticons; his trip to a used-car dealership run by Bernie Mac (in a cameo suggesting the script merely mentioned "Bernie Mac schtick") connects him with his personal guardian, Bumblebee, who turns into a Camaro and speaks via the radio � a gag lifted from Christine, which makes one wonder which radio station spins John Wayne quotes as part of its regular programming.

The boy and his new hottie girlfriend are soon hunted down by a secret government agency led by John Turturro, wearing goofy underwear and playing the material as cartoonishly as it deserves, as Secretary of Defense Jon Voight assembles a crack team of hackers to figure out where these mysterious alien attacks are coming from.

Yes, hackers; we're again subjected to the modern action-movie malaise of characters staring at computer screens for inordinate periods of time, and that old saw about the best hacker available being a fat, wacky shut-in (skip across the multiplex and check out Kevin Smith in the new Die Hard for comparison). Here the stereotype is compounded with that of the cowardly, yelping African-American. Also, not to spoil the fate of the jive-talking Autobot Jazz, but rest assured that even in advanced alien civilizations light years away, the black guy still gets it first.

When Bay finally realizes that all anybody's really here to see are big destructive robot battles and car chases, the pace and volume pick up, but it's all shot in his trademark roid-rage style, so most of it is largely incomprehensible flying wreckage and fireballs. But if you're the type that can defend a film where "the special effects are cool," then this will suffice (and if you had "just under six years" in the office pool regarding when an airplane slamming into the side of a heavily populated high-rise office building would go from chilling reminder to nifty action scene, collect your winnings).

Whatever. This should have been simple � you're making a big summer blockbuster based on toy robots that change into cars and planes and boomboxes. Minimize the plot, maximize the action, and the damn thing writes itself. But for all its $150 million budget, near-two-and-a-half-hour running time, and state-of-the-art special effects, Transformers is a 1950s B-picture in all but name. You've got the nonsensical mythology, the giant monsters attacking prominent landmarks (here, the Hoover Dam was built to hide the alien discoveries), and endless scenes of military brass spouting jargon and shooting ineffectively at the invaders until a fresh-faced youngster comes along to save the day. Bay may as well have shot lizards biting at each other in a scale-model landscape; the feel is virtually the same.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

TRANSFORMERS

Directed by Michael Bay
A Dreamworks SKG/Paramount Pictures release