Talk about "transforming." Michael Bay tested the patience of even the most devoted
Transformers fan with the second installment of the franchise,
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but the hyperactive director bounces back in energetic form with number three,
Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
From the long opening sequence (a zany alternate-history reading of the
NASA moon program, complete with cameos by John F. Kennedy and Richard
Nixon) through the predictably extended action climax, Bay is actually
on his best behavior. Sure, his taste is as vulgar as ever (is
introducing your leading lady via a lingering butt shot part of the
director's personal signature?), but the story line is streamlined and
the action is coherent: the constant chop-chop of the fighting sequences
in
Revenge is gone, replaced by a long-take approach that
actually shows us who's fighting who. Plus, it's hard to resist a
tilting skyscraper that allows the protagonists to slide down its glassy
exterior. I know, right?
Shia LaBeouf returns, armed with a new and
improbably bodacious girlfriend (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley); although
initially unemployed, he's drawn back into protecting the planet from
giant outer-space robots, as the Decepticons menace the Earth once
again. John Turturro and Josh Duhamel return to help, and Frances
McDormand and John Malkovich join the club. Let's reduce critical
expectations and say that if you're going to make a dumb movie about
mass destruction, this is the way to do it (and if that sounds like
faint praise, compare the movie to its abysmal predecessor). Throw in Hangover
funnyman Ken Jeong, computer nerd Alan Tudyk doing a German accent, and
the voice of Leonard Nimoy as Sentinel Prime, and you've got yourself a
three-ring circus of extremely spirited nonsense. Just how Michael Bay
wants it. --Robert Horton
