Originally published in Cinema Knife Fight, July 4, 2011
A Cinema Knife Fight Review with Michael Arruda
(The Scene: The interior of an office building. MICHAEL
ARRUDA is seated at a table when suddenly the building begins to tilt
dramatically, and people and objects begin to slide past MA, who remains calmly
seated. One of the people grabs onto the table and manages to take a seat
across from MA. It is DAN KEOHANE).
MA: Hey, Dan. Glad you could join me.
DK: No problem. (Brushing himself off) Thanks for giving me
such a dramatic entrance.
MA: Well, this is one of the more dramatic scenes from TRANSFORMERS:
DARK OF THE MOON, and I thought it would be a cool way to start our review.
Besides, I thought you’d get a kick out of sliding down a tilting building.
DK: Well, when you know it’s fake, it’s all in good fun.
MA (looks uneasily at camera, and then over DK’s shoulder as
two screaming people slide through a broken window into oblivion.) Yeah, fake.
Anyway, ready to start our review?
DK: Yep.
DK: Yep.
MA: Welcome folks to another edition of Cinema
Knife Fight. Today I’m joined by Dan Keohane, who’s filling in for L.L.
Soares today (who’s gone to Norway to get us the lowdown on TROLLHUNTER),
and we’ll be reviewing the new Transformers movie, TRANSFORMERS: DARK
OF THE MOON(2011).
I’ll say right off the bat that I had zero expectations for
this one, other than I expected not to like it, but for the most part, I was
entertained and felt like I got my money’s worth.
DK: Well, almost. Linda wanted to see the 3D version so I
relented, being the chivalrous chap I am. Until the movie was about to start
and she realized we were seeing TRANSFORMERS and not GREEN
LANTERN (2011) as she’d thought. But, we already had the glasses and
the popcorn, so we stayed. Good thing, too, otherwise this review would have
been pretty confusing.
MA: Chivalrous? Sounds like you pulled a fast one. “Sure,
honey, let’s go see (covers mouth with his hand) Trans-gree-lan-mers. Yeah, the
3D one.”
DK: I saw the first TRANSFORMERS movie at
the drive-in a few years back and was pleasantly surprised, so I figured I
would be entertained at the very least with this one (caveat, never saw the
second one). If you came for alien robot monsters destroying things and CGI
effects on steroids, then yeah, I guess it delivered.
MA: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, the third
film in the TRANSFORMERS movie series by Michael Bay, gets its
name from its opening sequences, in which we learn that a Transformers ship
crash-landed on the dark side of the moon, and this ship was discovered by the
astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission. And the reason we have never gone back to
the moon is because of the manipulations of evil Transformers here on earth who
don’t want us going back. Until now. And this sets up the rest of the movie’s
plot, as we switch to present day.
DK: I have to reluctantly toss in here that it was pretty
entertaining how they messed with history like this, mixing footage from the
original NASA moon landing with pretend stuff. They even had astronaut Buzz
Aldrin in a cameo explaining the cover up. That was cute. Anyway, carry on….
MA: Yeah, the opening grabbed my interest, too. I liked the
whole “dark side of the moon” bit, the whole NASA conspiracy, the “real” reason
we got involved in the space race. I thought this was fun, and a strong way to
open the movie. I also liked the way they did the historical footage, the
mixture of actual JFK footage, for example, mixed in with new footage with an
actor playing JFK. These opening scenes worked.
DK: Though they could have gotten better actors, or better
makeup for the ones playing the presidents.
MA: Once we switch to present day, we meet up with Sam
Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) the young hero from the previous TRANSFORMERS movies.
Sam is living with a new gorgeous babe Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) as
he’s broken up with babe Megan Fox from the previous TRANSFORMERS movies.
Gee, this guy has it rough! Sam is out of a job, and he’s depressed and
frustrated about this, and during his job search he gets to utter one of the
better lines of the movie, “I’ve saved the world twice, and I still can’t find
a job!”
DK: Yeah, he had some cool lines. Hell, this movie was
littered with clever lines. By the humans. The robots were annoying, but I jump
ahead.
MA: Sam does find a job, working in the mailroom for a
company run by an eccentric crackpot Bruce Brazos (John Malkovich). Malkovich
is hilarious here and in top form. It’s too bad this character isn’t in the
movie more. At this new job, Sam meets another crackpot Jerry Wang (Ken Jeong,
basically doing a watered down variation of his Mr. Chow character
from THE HANGOVER movies) who tells Sam of a conspiracy by the
evil Decepticons that involves the dark side of the moon.
(VOICE from somewhere off to the right)
VOICE: Did someone mention Chow?
MA: Before Sam can learn more, Wang is sent hurtling by a
Decepticon through his office window, falling to his death on the street below.
(On cue, a man hurtles past them and crashes through a
window. He shrieks as he falls to the ground.)
DK (nodding approvingly): Very realistic. Well done.
MA: Yes— we —strive for realism here.
So, Sam decides to seek out answers, and he soon hooks up
with old friends like former agent Simmons (John Turturo), and Autobots
Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. However, he also has to deal with Secretary of
Defense Charlotte Mearing (Frances McDormand), who, in a realistic turn, wants
Sam to have no part in the operation since he’s a civilian who—in spite of his
past—has no business working with the government at this level.
DK: I was SO psyched to see McDormand and Malkovich in this
film. Both were terrific, and I agree, the film would have done well to have
more Malkovich in it. I can never have enough of him.
MA: It turns out that on the dark side of the moon is the
famed autobot Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy), and Optimus Prime must revive him
so they can defeat the evil Decepticons once and for all. Of course, once
Sentinel Prime is revived, there’s a twist in the story, which all leads to the
ultimate battle between good transformers and bad transformers, with the humans
in the middle. If I said this wasn’t predictable I’d be lying.
DK: Yeah… (cough…) I saw that coming too… yeah, I really
did, sort of…. Nimoy had some cute lines as well, homage’s to his Spock character
throughout.
MA: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON provides
decent entertainment for 2/3 of its excruciatingly long running time of 157
minutes. Yes, this movie failed on the “butt comfort” meter. I was in pain by
the end!
DK: Have to agree there. This movie was WAY too
long. “Butt” seriously, what do you expect? They give someone like director
Michael Bay a gabillion dollars and tell him to go ahead and do whatever the
hell he wants. You get an exhausting two and a half hour movie with so much
friggin’ violence, I actually checked the marquee to see if it was rated R.
Nope, PG-13.
MA: You thought it was really violent? Either I’m getting
desensitized, or you haven’t seen too many violent R-rated movies lately. I
didn’t find it violent at all.
DK: Well, I was watching it with the idea that it’s kind of
supposed to be aimed at kids. Wrong assumption I think, but in that light, it’s
pretty intense. For an action film over all, not too bad.
MA: I have to give credit to Bay and screenwriter Ehren
Kruger. They filled this movie with likeable characters who really held my
interest for most of this movie, before it turns its attention to the Autobots
and Decepticons. If this movie hadn’t been about Transformers, I would have
loved it! But it could have been much worse. It could have been one of those
colossal special effects bores, where there are no characters to speak of. This
is not the case. The human element of this movie is very good.
DK: Yes! I really enjoyed the cast (most of them). I
actually said at one point that this would have been a far better movie if they
had fewer Transformers in it. At least, give them fewer lines. Actually,
thinking about it now, the filmmakers seemed to do just that. Over such a long
stretch of film, the Transformers themselves had very few speaking parts. In a
way, I think Bay pulled a fast one on the producers and used their money to
film quite a stunning alien invasion movie by writing the Autobots and
Decepticons (man, those are the dumbest names—obviously I was never much a fan
of the cartoon) just enough to get his paycheck.
MA: As I started to say before, I really liked the
characters in this movie. Shia LaBeouf makes for a very likeable young hero as
Sam. I think that of the three TRANSFORMER movies, this was
probably his best performance.
DK: Agreed. LaBeouf was good. He plays his character
straight, and his frustration with his job situation and girlfriend issues was
well done.
MA: Speaking of best performances, John Turturo delivered
the best performance in the movie as former agent Simmons, still interested in
alien conspiracies, and as eccentric as ever. He was my favorite character by
far, and although he is in the movie for a decent amount of time, I wish he had
been in it more.
DK: Yeah, he was good, but I have to disagree. Along with
Malkovich, my favorite was Alan Tudyk’s portrayal of Dutch. Tudyk (FIREFLY, DEATH
AT A FUNERAL) has to be one of the funniest actors around. His fake German
accent (and I think he tried to make it as bad as possible) and bizarrely
out-of-place scene in a Russian bar was absolutely hilarious.
MA: Yeah, that was a good scene, but I still like Turturo
better. His performance intrigued me more, while Tudyk just made me laugh.
Patrick Dempsey makes a good villain, as he plays Dylan,
Carly’s boss, who at first just seems to be a weasel for putting the moves on
another man’s girlfriend, but as the story unfolds, he’s up to things far more
sinister.
Frances McDormand, as you would expect, is very good as
Secretary of Defense Mearing. John Malkovich is hilarious as Bruce Brazos,
Sam’s weird boss. While Malkovich is terrific, sadly the role is a thankless
one and is nothing more than an extended cameo, since Bruce disappears for the
entire second half of the film, which is too bad, because he’s a hoot.
Kevin Dunn and Julie White return as Sam’s parents, and I
found them much less annoying in this movie than in the previous ones, mostly
because their screen time has been greatly reduced. However, that being said,
the brief scenes they share with Sam are excellent. Ken Jeong is also on hand
as the outrageous Jerry Wang. Again, Jeong pretty much reprises his Mr.
Chow shenanigans from THE HANGOVER movies, though here he’s giving
us the PG-13 version.
VOICE: Did someone mention Chow?
(Mr. Chow is slowly crawling toward them,
through the debris, when he loses his grip and slides through the window again,
with a scream)
DK: Yea, the guy is a scene-stealer, especially in the
bathroom scene (of course), but the actor seems grossly pigeon-holed into this
kind of role. Like you say, though, every actor in this film, from the soldier
grunts to Jeoong’s psycho-scientist, gave 110% to their roles. Everyone seemed
to be having a BLAST making this movie.
(On cue, there is a huge explosion outside.)
DK: Even the sound effects seem real.
(Behind DK, blood spatters a glass window.)
MA (winces): Where was I?
DK: The cast.
MA: Yes, this is a veteran cast that does not disappoint. To
Michael Bay and Ehren Kruger’s credit, they really stock this film with
likeable characters. The problem is eventually they all take a back seat to the
Transformers, which I find silly and boring.
DK: Me too. Visually, they were stunning to watch (because
of the very cool CGI, NOT because of the 3D glasses).
MA: What would have made this movie succeed at a higher
level, would have been including more of these characters at the end of this
movie. During the final battle, Sam and Carly are pretty much the only main
characters directly involved. Had John Turturo, Frances McDormand and John
Malkovich also been there in on the action, we’d be talking about a much more
entertaining movie.
DK: I have to disagree there. The soldiers (Josh Duhamel and
Lester Speight, to name just two) were the main characters in the second half
of the movie.
MA: I know. That’s why I didn’t like the second half as
much, because I didn’t like these characters as much, nor did I consider them
main characters.
DK: Well, the soldiers are involved at the end because, once
the bad alien robots take over Chicago, it becomes a war movie. Sam and his
always-stainless Stepford girlfriend were simply the visual constants running
among the cast. For a war movie, it was pretty awesome to watch.
MA: Speaking of Stepford girlfriends, one cast member who
doesn’t fare as well is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, as Sam’s beautiful
girlfriend Carly. Yes, she’s absolutely stunning and beautiful, but she’s also
strictly eye candy here. Not that her acting was necessarily bad, because it
wasn’t. She’s fine. She’s just rather dull, and if not for her beauty, we
wouldn’t be talking about her. Another gripe, though not her fault, is during
the film’s climactic battle, she’s running around in heels!
DK: Listen, this movie is geared to guys of our generation
who watched the original cartoon (me being the exception), but it’s also aimed
at teenage boys. Whiteley’s Carly is not a real character in any sense of the
word. In fact, if we want to add any depth to the plot—just for kicks, because
Bay and company had no intention to have this be the case—Carly is not real,
she’s a figment of Sam’s imagination, a wish fulfillment of a young boy in a
man’s body. Why else could she have been in a war zone for so long, in a
building which was crushed and destroyed, tossed out a window, nearly crushed
by a hundred blocks of concrete and a bus, and yet not have one stain or
blemish on her flimsy outfit? Because she’s not real. Did
you ever wonder why no one ever spoke to her except Sam and the bad guy (and,
being the Bad Guy, he uses Sam’s delusions against him!). Actually, that’s
quite clever. I’m a clever guy, did you know that?
MA: Well, you heard it here first, folks, on Cinema
Knife Fight, the truth behind Carly’s character! Pretty neat theory. I
don’t buy it, but it’s a fun theory. I mean, I think John Malkovich’s character
talks to her at one point, doesn’t he? As does John Turturro’s character, and
Frances McDormand— okay, toss out thattheory!
There’s also a veteran cast voicing the Transformers. Peter
Cullen returns once more as the voice of Optimus Prime. Cullen has voiced
Optimus in all three movies, and also did back in the animated cartoon series
from the 1980s. Cullen is also the voice of Eeyore from the WINNIE THE
POOH cartoons.
DK: Really? I like Eeyore. He’s funny.
(Eeyore goes sliding past them.)
EEYORE: These things always happen to me.
(EEYORE slides off the edge of the building.)
DK: Was that—?
MA: Nah!
Hugo Weaving voices the villainous Megatron— we’ll be seeing
Weaving soon as The Red Skull in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER and
Sentinel Prime is voiced by Leonard Nimoy, which opens the door for a bunch
of STAR TREK in-jokes in the movie, as Dan mentioned way up at
the beginning of this review. At one point, Mr. Spock is seen on TV in a STAR
TREK episode, and as Sentinel Prime, Nimoy gets to deliver one of his
more famous lines from the STAR TREK movie series, from STAR
TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982).
So, it’s quite the cast, and that took me quite a long time
to get through. Nearly 157 minutes!
DK: I had to go pee at one point. That’s a long movie.
MA: I enjoyed the screenplay by Ehren Kruger. The first half
of the movie was very witty and good for some laughs, and Kruger did a nice job
creating a bunch of likeable characters.
Even director Michael Bay gets some high marks for this one.
The movie looks great, the action scenes are decent and entertaining, and for
the most part they don’t go on too long.
DK: Yes, visually this movie was amazing and the scenes were
short enough to not drag on. It’s just that there were so many of
them.
MA: I loved the sequence in the tilting office building. It
was completely unbelievable, but it was still fun!
DK: Totally over the top, but a hoot to watch.
MA: I saw the movie in 3D, too, though I knew I was going to
see TRANSFORMERS and not GREEN LANTERN, and once
again—so much so, I’m growing tired of saying so—the 3D failed to impress. It
added nothing to the movie. In fact, again, midway
through, I forgot I was even watching it in 3D. So, if you have the choice,
save your money and see it in 2D. I didn’t really have the choice, because the
2D version was playing only once and at an oddball time, compared to the two
convenient showings of the 3D version.
DK: Definitely, yes. The 3D is pointless here. Actually, one
of theaters in Worcester had more showings of the 2D version than the 3D, which
tells me even the theaters are growing weary of this gimmick.
MA: So, what’s wrong with TRANSFORMERS:
DARK OF THE MOON? The biggest thing wrong with it is it’s about TRANSFORMERS.
I mean, regardless of the humongous budget, the impressive special effects and
the veteran cast, this is, after all, just a big-budget big-screen kids’ movie
about giant robots. It’s difficult to take this film seriously, and I certainly
can’t classify it as satisfying adult entertainment.
Sure, this movie is probably the darkest of the series, but
how dark can a TRANSFORMERS movie be? You know Megatron is not
about to mercilessly murder our young heroes. Sure, he’s going to try but—I
mean, it’s Scooby Doo stuff! Megatron would have taken over the world, if not
for “those meddling kids!”
Lastly, the relationship between Sam and Carly is a
microcosm for what’s lacking in these TRANSFORMERS movies. Sam
is desperately in love with Carly, so much so, we’re supposed to believe he’d
go to the ends of the earth and risk his life to save hers. Really? Why does he
love her so much? Is it because she’s absolutely beautiful? Is that why he
loves her? Because she’s an incredibly hot babe? It must be, because they share
no on-screen chemistry. Nothing we see them do convinces us they’re in love.
Their relationship is eye candy without depth, and that is the central problem
with this movie.
You want me to care deeply? To really care
about what’s going on? Then give me real characters, real relationships
that I can believe in, give me a reason why two young people love each other so
much, and I’ll return to your movie series time and time again, because I’ll
care about your characters and won’t sleep unless I know what’s happened to
them. If this were the case, then we’d be talking about raising TRANSFORMERS up
a few notches.
DK: Okay, you just spent WAY too
much time talking about Sam and Carly. Their relationship is merely there to
serve as wish fulfillment for teenage boys. Period. And to show the mental
delusions of Sam, who has suffered such serious post-traumatic stress from
saving the world, that he invented a new girlfriend.
MA: I disagree. Sam is driven in this movie by his “love”
for Carly. I’m simply saying I didn’t find this “love” believable, and had I
found it believable, I would have liked this movie more.
DK: No, the driving force behind the character Sam is to
keep moving before the clowns in the walls can get him and eat him up.
MA: Oka-ay.
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON could have been
much worse. As it stands, it’s a fairly entertaining movie that’s got enjoyable
characters, a humorous script, decent action sequences and eye-popping special
effects, but at the end of the day, it’s all fluff, the stuff that 10-year-old
boys dream about. I give it two and a half knives.
DK: One point to make, and worth seeing, if you take a
10-year-old boy to this movie, keep one thing in mind: it’s pretty violent. You
see innocent people in the streets of Chicago blown to pieces over and over
again. Two of the good Transformers die pretty horrible deaths, one
execution-style. It might actually be too traumatic a movie for kids under 10.
Seriously.
MA (laughing): Seriously? I mean, there’s no blood in these
scenes at all. I wouldn’t classify them as violent. However,
the film is rated PG-13, so parents probably shouldn’t
be taking their 10 year-olds in the first place!
DK: Trying to take what little kids will think (which isn’t
hard, being a dad myself) into account, I thought the Chicago invasion and
liberation section of the movie (the last third) kicked major butt. And the
Transformers spoke very little, which helped a lot. And it could have been a
shorter film, I agree. But despite all the money, all the special effects and
all the cool actors, well, I kind of wished we’d gone to see GREEN
LANTERN instead, because I didn’t enjoy this one much.
MA: Actually, GREEN LANTERN was worse! The
characters in this movie were much more entertaining than the characters
in GREEN LANTERN.
DK: But dinner was good afterwards (at least until the
police called because, unbeknownst to me, I knocked over my neighbor’s mailbox on
the way to the movies—but that’s another story for another time). I give
it two knives.
MA: Well, that about wraps things up here. Thanks again,
Dan, for filling in for L.L. today.
DK: Happy to do it. It was fun. Speaking of fun, now I can
ride the slide.
MA: Excuse me?
(DK lets go of his chair and slides down the tilted building
towards the edge.)
MA: No, Dan, wait!
DK: Geronimo!!! (DK slides off the edge of the building.)
MA: That’s not good. (Cell phone rings. MA answers it.)
MA: Hey, L.L.! Yeah, we’re just finishing up now. Dan? Oh,
he’s—he’s not here right now. He’s— well, how do I put this?
(Suddenly DK flies into view outside window and gives MA a
thumbs-up while in midair.)
DK: Trampoline! I’m okay! (DK falls out of sight once
again.)
MA: He just had so much fun he had to go off and jump around
some. You know Dan. Oh yeah, I’m sure he’ll be back to do this again sometime.
(DK flies by again, dancing with Eeyore.) I hope.
—END—
© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda and Daniel G. Keohane
Michael Arruda gives TRANSFORMERS: DARK
SIDE OF THE MOON - - 2 and a half knives!
Dan Keohane gives TRANSFORMERS: DARK
SIDE OF THE MOON - - 2 knives!