Transformers Dark of the Moon Review

Michael Bay and the Transformers writing team really needed to up their game after the poor reception the second movie received (although I'll be honest I really enjoyed Transformers Revenge of the Fallen despite its mountainous plot holes and plot contrivances!)

I'm happy to say Transformers Dark of the Moon is a good action film that provides plenty of humour, especially Alan Tudyk (Firefly) as the hilariously camp Dutch, an employee of John Turturro's Simmons. No Transformers film would be complete without explosions and this film of course allows alot of stuff to blow up in true Michael Bay fashion, who directs some great action scenes as would be expected of him, particularly in the last hour where the film builds to its grand crescendo which is literally nonstop and was actually a bit exhausting.

This time around the film centres around the space race of the 1960s and why America really went to the moon, to find and explore an alien spaceship crashed there. The plot gradually reveals the importance of this event through its fairly long run time of 2 and a half hours and the film also introduces a new major player, Sentinel Prime, the former leader of the autobots, voiced by an excellent Leonard Nimoy. The plot has a few surprising turns and despite some plot holes (come on its an action movie about robots) it feels at times quite epic in scale, even if it needs a few plot contrivances on the way to keep it going.

Shia Labeouf was again well suited to his role as Sam Witwicky and plays the humorous scenes well. It was particularly enjoyable as ever watching his embarrassed reactions to his parents providing up front no nonsense advice and opinions on his life, his banter with Bumblebee and his jealousy of his new girlfriend Carly's (played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) relationship with her boss Dylan (Patrick Dempsey). The character of Carly was literally just a like for like replacement for Megan Fox, with plenty of bum and cleavage shots. Carly is even introduced by the camera following her bum for at least a minute as she walks to bed. She was played fairly well by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley but there wasn't much to play around with other than to look gorgeous and make a plot device.

The Transformers looked great as always and I had the easiest time yet telling the difference between who was battling although I didn't know half the names of the autobots and decepticons anyway. There was some really disappointing 3D though in this film and for the most part I didn't notice any and it was definitely not worth the extra price of admission I paid for it.

Some of the voice acting of Optimus Prime I thought was quite poor at times and sounded like a completely different voice actor had taken over for the odd line and the sidelining of Megatron throughout the movie was a minor disappointment given it is the end of Michael Bay's trilogy.

I understand the Megatron has been defeated in two movies now so probably isn't that menacing the third time around, but the writers didn't even try. He just sulks alot and in the big final battle in the last hour, Megatron sits through almost the whole thing with a rug over his head for no reason, not really the monstrous villain he use to be, he just looked like a transformer on the dole.

Shockwave was given the biggest role of the decepticons and was a lot more menacing and at times seemed like he was more in control and more powerful than Megatron, controlling some giant snake like transformer providing the film's most spectacular, if a bit outrageous, moments.

As you'd probably expect from an American action film, some of the scripting is pretty bad and extremely cheesy. Whilst the banter between Sam and Bumblebee and his parents has been done well throughout the movie franchise, some character lines had me in laughter because they were shoe horned in and were so bad. Simmons suddenly saying to Sam during an 'emotional' scene where all seems lost "Years from now, they are gonna ask us 'where were you when they took over the planet?'" was so out of place and its randomness was cringeworthy.

Overall this is a solid action movie with some hilarious comic moments which I think will redeem the franchise in some of its fierce critics' eyes, and it has clearly had money thrown at it by the bucket load. No one should go into it thinking it's going to be an all time classic as many critics seem to do with these kind of films and enjoy it for what it is. Despite a few flaws and cheesy moments this is a good film and will definitely please action movie and Transformers fans. But don't bother watching it in 3D, the adverts before made better use of it.

Rating: C