Transformers: Dark of the Moon (’11 review)

3 out of 5

There is entertainment in the bloated, tonally confused and downright excessive threequel Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  The script isn’t as clever as the first flick which slowly revealed the giant transforming robots however its story is much more coherent than the second one.  It also provides the requisite amount of giant freakin’ robot destruction.  But, sweet Jebus, you have to slag through a lot.  Not really recommended as a full film, Dark of the Moon is possibly best experienced by buying a ticket, ditching to a nearby bar for an hour and a half, and running back for the last full hour of robots smashing the bejesus out of everything. 

An ancient Transformer ship known as The Ark was lost eons ago, carrying the legendary robot, Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy).  It was discovered on the Moon in the ‘60s and the Apollo astronaut mission’s real purpose was to uncover its secrets.  In the present day, good robot Optimus Prime rediscovers his old friend Sentinel but there are mysterious dealings in the shadows with humans and evil robot Decepticons.  Meanwhile, Sam (Shia LaBeouf) is in a relationship with a new girlfriend (Rose Huntington-Whiteley), trying to find a job, and is saddened because he is cut off from ever seeing his transforming friends ever again.  These plots vaguely intersect in an awkward manner but eventually the flick becomes total robot smashie-smashie. 

LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky over the course of three films has gone from comedic everyman to a whiny jerk.  Replacing Megan Fox is Rose Hunington-Whiteley as Sam’s love interest.  She is a slightly better actress than Fox, but this isn’t about her acting skills since the first time you see her on screen is literally a butt shot in 3D.  Hunington-Whiteley looks impossibly beautiful even when she’s taken hostage for days by killer robots.

Patrick Dempsey plays her boss and he’s basically a bore but he gets slightly more interesting by the end.  John Malkovich is LaBeouf’s smarmy prick boss and disappears from the flick after dominating the first 30 minutes. Returning players Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson point and shoot like they did the other films, and Alan Tudyk, Ken Jeong, John Turturro offer comic relief to mixed results. To be fair, Tudyk’s wacky assistant usually scores.  Real life astronaut Buzz Aldrin pops up in a somewhat bizarre bit that reveals the connection between the Apollo missions and Transformers. Aldrin doesn’t show his face again and when the Decepticons start killing off their human collaborators you start to worry that they got him too. 

As for the robots, Peter Cullen is still delivers the goods as the iconic voice of Optimus Prime.  Hugo Weaving’s Megatron, now half-broken and rusting, is disappointingly sidelined most of the film. There’s actually a moment where he gets chewed out by the Hunington-Whiteley and sadly he doesn’t crush her like an ant. This is Nimoy’s second voice gig in a Transformers film.  He played Galvatron in the 1988 animated flick where his co-stars included Orson Wells.  In this film his co-star is Shia LaBeouf.  That sums that up.  Nimoy’s performance in the animated flick is a lot more fun but he gets some good bits in here especially when he drops Spock’s iconic “Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” line. 

In the first hour and a half the Transformer-infused secret history of the space race is cool but it takes up little screen-time.  Mostly it’s Sam getting a job shoehorned into with little relevance to the plot. There are a lot of lame gags and scenes of LeBeouf on a rage bender at his lack of job mobility and being left behind by his robot pals.  At least in the second movie he was acting wigged out because his brain was friend by a piece of alien technology. 

In the last hour almost all notions of plot and characterization goes out the window and it becomes a visceral exercise. There is one positively spectacular scene of the characters in a collapsing building, the surprisingly brutal destruction of the entire city of Chicago, and a final showdown with Starscream that is extremely messy.  All of this actually works really well and is worth the 3D upgrade.  Director Michael Bay usually features a lot hand-held shaky-cam and extremely fast edits, stylistic choices that are not good for 3D.  Bay’s editing here is a hair slower and the camera is steadier, creating one of the best 3D experiences since Avatar. 

Shockingly, there are a few robot deaths that actually resonate. The action has gotten progressively bigger with each instalment leaving the series nowhere else to go from here. These robot demises feel definite, like Bay is proclaiming he’s done with Transformers and smashes his toys so nobody else can play with them.  The final three-character battle is particularly effective with one robot brutally, yet awesomely, tearing the head off another.  Can’t do that with humans but with robots its A-OK!

Transformers: Dark of the Moon will not make you think like good sci-fi should, but it does provide wham-bang robot crunching. But mostly this is all in the last hour.  Don’t sweat it if you’re running late.