Transformers: Dark of the Moon - review

1/2
10 April 2012

Director Michael Bay knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't bother much with either storyline or characterisation - he keeps those two staples as simple as possible.

What he likes is action, action, action all the way - and that's what his legion of fans like too, never mind the usual critical snootiness.

The third instalment of Transformers proves the point. It will take a small fortune at the summer box office as the Autobots, Cybertonions and Decepticons fight to the death to control Earth, with good and evil humans playing bit parts. Shia LaBeouf and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley are the two chief pieces of recognisable flesh and blood we are asked to root for as Chicago gets levelled.

But why this expensive and expansive 3D spectacular lasts two and a half hours is beyond me. It repeats itself endlessly and involves so much destruction as the robots smash each other up (with the slight help of the Marines) that you wonder whether Bay was snoozing on the job and just forgot to say "cut".

You can't ever tell who is doing what to whom, either. Logic, of course, has nothing to do with this fantasy. At one point, for instance, Huntington-Whiteley, replacing Megan Fox as the heroine for no particularly good acting reason, slides down the side of a lopsided and gradually crashing glass building, and gets up not only unharmed but still in her high heels.

When Frances McDormand comes on as some sort of security executive, things briefly look up. It isn't that she says anything much - there's nothing much in the screenplay - but she gives the film a lift, with the look of a stern matron at a rowdy high school. John Malkovich, Josh Duhamel and John Turturro are all here too, without much to do.

The detail is in the animated CGI - and this is where Transformers fans will appreciate Bay's efforts best. The chaotic combat scenes are terrifically done.

If the whole is some way better than the deafening second instalment of the franchise, that doesn't mean it's a triumph. It takes loads and loads of expert technicians to get this sort of mayhem right, and a director such as Bay who glories in the result, though nothing else is more than par for the course. It's confusing at times for sure, and too long, but it gives audiences more or less what they want.

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon
Cert: 12A

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