Transformers: The Movie

I can't lie. I saw the movie three times in theatres. That's a first since Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace. So what's one to do when their childhood comes raging on the big screen with the force of a runaway Kenworth truck? Strap in an enjoy the Ride!

The Story: This is not great cinema that's for sure, but it is Transformers to the core: Nerdy kid, Heroic Autobots, Evil Decepticons, interfering humans, and one object that can create and destroy worlds. Yea, this the Transformers, for sure. Filled with just the right amount of cheese to be an homage to the series that started it all. Honestly , if you were there for the story, you need to wait until the sequels once we have time, and enough money to render that kind of in-depth Transformer history (here I'm referring to ridiculous 38 hours per FRAME of rendering that ILM had to do). I'm willing to wait for a more in-depth story. This was an excellent intro movie.

The Characters: The Autobots remained true to the heritage of their characters, although Bumblebee's speaking voice didn't seem to fit. The Con's though, well they were there, with Barricade and Megatron getting the most screen time, but certainly stand to more fleshed out, along with the human characters. Still they crammed a lot into a 2.5 hour movie, although that was mostly plot.

The Action: Hold onto your transistors, and don't blink a diode or you'll miss it. Still when you have characters having nearly 10, 000 moving parts each that's sheer technological grunt working for you. And the Bumblebee on the tow-truck fire-fight was inventive and worked well. The Prime vs Megatron fight was tough to sort out, needed to pull back a little (although with repeated viewing it becomes more clear).

The Graphics: One word: Intense. Congrats to Industrial Light & Magic for one-upping themselves on this one. Like my friend Nick said, if you didn't know giant robots didn't exist it'd be hard to argue against it from the looks of this movie. 10 000 moving parts, 38 hours of rendering paid off in a big way, even the Transformations are sweet, and jaw dropping to look at. Even though I hated the designs at first blush, this movie, and the way they move justify the designs.

The Verdict: Go check it out. It's great summer movie, with hilarity, action, Old School Heroes and Villains, and JAW-DROPPINg GRAPHICS!