Transformers ~ a review

I never got to see it int cinema, mostly cos I were working like a demon. Well, no, actually, I were just too lazy to get advance tickets and turned up on two separate occasions to buy em ont door and found the place full. So I gave it up as a bad job. Well no, I gave it up cos I were lazy.

Anyway, the point is, I just watched it last night and bloody loved it. The very first moment, still while all the studio credit cards and shite are flying round the screen, we get the sound. No, wait a minute, The Sound. Oh yes – that’s the sound of the Autobots, and anyone my age will probably have squee’d just like I did. The sound just brought back so many fab memories… And then came The Voice. First off, I’ve went ‘It’s Peter Cullen! We’ve got Venger from Dungeons & Dragons!’, and then I’ve went ‘No, he were Optimus Prime too – they got him back – WOO-HOO!’ and so on and so forth. Sad, I know, but a part of me again had a terribly powerful nostalgia trip and I almost forgot to watch the film.

Then we had the first of many of them faces where you go ‘oh, he’s in it too?’, as Danny from ‘Las Vegas’, otherwise known as Josh Duhamel, turns up as the amazingly lickable likeable Captain Lennox. Very pleased wi’ that bit o’ casting, ta. Then in trundles this Shia LeBoeuf mushty as some character called Sam, and it all kicks off. Is it me, or does he remind anyone else of a very young Russell Crowe? Thought he did a good job of it all though, for someone supposed to be so young. He might go far in kiddy-flicks, that one. I fell about laffing at his parents, I have to say, as they were just so incredibly good at stealing scenes. The parts of the in-film TV interview used during the end credits had me in stitches. The Hot Chick Mikeala was obviously beefed up a bit fert role, so now she fixes cars and is a World Rally Championship driver when it comes to reversing down a street so as Bumblebee can take potshots as nasty nasty Decepticons. Did she remind anyone else of a young Jennifer Connelly? No? Ok, fair enough. I quite liked her toward the end, though.

Oh, and let’s get to them Transformers, shall we? I’m not going to go into how they’ve changed Bumblebee from a VW Beetle to a 1967 Camaro (even though the Camaro was a very very nice car – before it was changed to a Mark 5), or how Soundwave has suddenly become Frenzy. I’m just going to say that the actual use of the characters for the Autobots was fab. I loved Optimus Prime’s impatience as purr wee Sam’s looking through his bedroom fert glasses – wrist on corner of the building, other hand over his eyes, huffing to himself. Pure bloody class.

Supporting cast like Jon Voight (who sounds more Texan every year), John Turturro (how fab was his ‘Sector Seven’ vest?) and Anthony Anderson only helped it along. If I could just voice two gripes though:

Music – Steve Joblonsky did a fair job o the score, but it smacked just a little too much of some kind of mix of Hans Zimmer + James Newton Howard’s ‘Batman Begins’ and Brad Fiedel’s ‘The Terminator’ – some drums I swear were lifted straight off the track from the latter. At other times I thought it were Hans Zimmer himself, and were a little surprised when the names finally came up fert music and behind scenes people. But there we go.

Also, I beg to differ on the whole ‘let’s drop ‘em into the deepest place on the planet – the Laurentian Abyss, cos the cold and pressure will sort em out'. Er… ‘scuse me, but int the Marianas Trench actually the deepest place on Earth? And I’m only saying that cos it came up in ‘QI’ a few weeks back. I’m not actually a geologist or whatever you call someone who knows that kind of stuff.

Anyway, this aside, I haven’t laffed and enjoyed a two-hour stretch of American film so much in a long time. I’m glad I parked me arse and gave it a chance, considering everyone else were saying it were shite. So much for listening to peers, eh. Praps I were just blinded by nostalgia, or just the knock-out CGI work that went into the Transformers themselves, or the supporting cast, or just the way it yipped along so bloody fast. Whatever man, I enjoyed it. (And yeah, I’ve clocked the My Little Pony and Gizmo gags by Hasbro. Nice.)

And now for summat completely different: To add to my collection of ‘there is no God’ evidence, Terry Pratchett has announced he has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s. See? I’m putting that ont list, next to Freddie Mercury and 9/11.

And that’s it. I’m off to get a big drink.

Soopytwist.

Tags:
Transformers ~ Michael Bey ~ Peter Cullen ~ Optimus Prime ~ D&D ~ Josh Duhamel ~ Bumblebee ~ Camaro ~ VW Beetle ~ Jon Voight ~ John Tuturro ~ Terry Pratchett