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One of the Autobots gets ready to do battle |
Heavy metal robots up for a scrap!
TRANSFORMERS
Directed by Michael Bay
Certificate 12a
SOMEONE let Steven Spielberg loose in the toy shop, and gave him zillions of dollars to spend in it.
That’s the impression I get from this prolonged sci-fi saga based on the “action figures” where cars change into giant steel robots and back again. The Transformers began life in Japan in the 1980s, and when the US picked up the franchise it led to comic books and a hit television series featuring “Autobots” (the good guys) and “Decepticons” (the baddies).
Now Spielberg, the master of all he surveys in Hollywood, fulfils an apparent boyhood dream by bringing these alien lumps of steel to the big screen as executive producer.
“I was enthralled by them as a kid,” he is reported as saying.
Well OK, Steve. But did you have to foist your youthful exuberance on us with this overlong (2 hrs 20 mins), overloud marathon of metallic mayhem with a deafening sound-track that left my ears ringing for hours afterwards?
The plot has something to do with two tribes of alien robots waging war against one another to become masters of the universe. At stake is a mystical cube – “the source of all energy” – which went missing a century ago under the Antarctic ice, and was found by a polar explorer whose great grandson Sam (Shia LaBoeuf) has unwittingly become mankind’s last chance of survival. Confusing, or what?
“You hold the key,” the Autobot leader (voiced by Peter Cullen) tells Sam in sonorous tones as the shrapnel flies around them. The poor boy has no idea why, and frankly neither have we.
The special effects are impressive, even if the invaders remind one of Spielberg’s monsters in War of the Worlds, and there are several repeats of creatures exploding out of the ground to wreak havoc on all and sundry.
Everyone shouts, mostly unintelligibly, and when they’re not shouting they are speaking too fast anyway. Oh, for the days when actors spoke their lines clearly and concisely.
John Turturro as a hard-nosed government agent and Jon Voight as the Secretary of Defence bring a welcome touch of sanity, but even they are overwhelmed by the pitched battles that turn the screen into a scrap yard. |
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