Transformers:the movie mini-review 3/5

I saw the new Transformers movie yesterday. It was an entertaining and fun movie for the summer but ultimately disappointing. I'll start with the good: great looking robots,transformations,and action sequences.Optimus Prime was voiced by Peter Cullen who does his best. Ratchet and Ironhide were well voiced too.Jazz is okay but does not get enough dialog.The actor playing "Sam Witwicky" (what was wrong with Spike Witwicky?)is very good and makes the movie watchable in certain scenes when it otherwise would not have been. But "Sam" does not always act like Spike would, "Sam" is supposed to be a class clown/nerd. However, anyone who saw "Sam" wouldn't think he was nerdy,he's way too stylish. Why couldn't he have been a construction worker along with his dad Sparkplug? , and Chip,the computer genius was notably absent too. "Mikaela" is no Carly even though she's tough and smart.Carly did not dress like a trailer park tramp in her 20's, and she was a blonde not a brunette. Hayden Panetierre (Claire on Heroes) would have made a great Carly.They could have made Sam's love interest a Latina,Asian ,or African-American too and that would have infinitely better than the choice they made.Megatron gets some good lines but none of the other Decepticons do. The bad: there was no character depth whatsoever!Most of the human characters are rather flat "stock" characters, they waste time and add little to the plot., a lame and silly plot, they spent way too much on the human characters,the Autobots don't show up in complete form until about an hour into the film, Bumblebee isn't a Beetle at all,in fact a VW Beetle gets hit by the Bumblebee-Camaro! If they were going to do that then Sam's car should have been Windcharger at least he was a Pontiac Firebird(the Camaro twin) ,Starscream is not used nearly enough and not given his fabulously personality either,no Rumble,Lazerbeak, or Soundwave! A crawling anonymous robo-creature is what we get instead! some of the fight scenes are blurred so you can't see who did what to whom until someone gets up after crashing through a building.There's also some subtle racism,ethnocentrism,imperialism, homophobia, and obvious sexism throughout the movie.The writers for the original Transformers cartoon should be credited and appreciated after what Michael Bay and his screenwriters did to a great transforming robot story. The bulk of the film should have been spent with the actual Transforming robots not a boring rehash of 80's teen comedies,80's war films,and just about all of Michael Bay's previous films some of which I might add are nothing more than military propaganda. What more can I say except that the Japanese know giant robots better than Americans, considering that is where Transformers and Gobots are originally from. Japan has a long and fascinating relationship with robots and androids,I think Transformers would have been so much better if it had been made there with some of the same actors.Well,that's my opinionated two cents for you, at least they won't do anything with the Gobots.