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Week Of June 25, 2007 - Wed / Fri
June 29, 2007
Merde That Meets The EyeUp is down, black is white.
It's an odd summer when you start with three films that gross hundreds of millions domestically and are consider so-so by the "analysts" (aka, any schmuck with a blog and any studio exec with an opinion).
Now we are faced with the even odder event of a film meant to be a summer mega-hit that is so childish that it can't reach adults, yet is so heavy handed that it will challenge the patience of children, and which could have surprised adults had it chosen to wallow in its childishness instead of trying to be more than meets the eye.
At the same time, we have an aging franchise with an aging hero who still looks great getting the over-the-top CG and stunt treatment that will amuse some adults, but mostly draw the geek action crowd who will complain about it a lot while secretly getting off on the bang bang silliness of it all.
And we have an animated movie from a major studio, presumably for kids, that is the best thing in the marketplace for adult audiences at the moment.
Go figure.
Ratatouille and Live Free or Die Hard have already been reviewed here. And now, it is time to look at Transformers ... yet I have this weird feeling like this trio of movies hold some unusually significant significance this summer. I have little critical respect for the two big action movies. But I also know that there is a significant portion of the audience that will enjoy and embrace the simple gaudiness of both of the them. And that intrigues me. I cannot say that I was in personal agony during either and yet ...
Transformers is pretty much along the lines of Small Soldiers meets Godzilla meets Terminator 2. I liked Small Soldiers, but its campy notion of the world was not embraced by a vast audience. The tone of that film is represented in much of Transformers, as Shia LeBeouff mugs for the camera, acts like a teen idiot, and comes of age via his association with a car that is more than meets the eye. The ultimate Small Soldiers goofy bit is when the Autobots choose to hide adorably in the backyard rather than turn back into cars ... but I am getting a little ahead of myself.
One of the flaws of the film, though it is weird to be citing flaws in a film that is so uninterested in logic, is that the audience cannot follow the logic of the story or its characters. Yet, Bay & Co resist allowing this to turn into the Termite Terrace WB cartoon that it really should have been. In fact, as goofy as the aforementioned beat with a robot twice as tall as the house hiding like a kid playing hide & seek is, those goofy beats are the only time the movie starts to come to life.
This is when you realize you are falling into some of the same giant footprints as Godzilla. The Emmerich/Devlin remake missed the boat not because the technology that allowed them to created a living, breathing, honestly animalistic Godzilla was not the coolest ever seen to that date. It was that no one wanted to go see the movie about a trapped animal and a bunch of stupid humans chasing it. They - we - love the anthropomorphic Godzilla from the old movies. Great ... they could do it with more realistic effects than a guy in a rubber suit stomping on a cardboard Tokyo. But it was the personality of the giant lizard ... the sense that he we knew he was good, even if he seemed bad, because we knew he was protecting Tokyo and the world, that he was a victim of the nuclear age and not a victimizer. He was our anti-hero hero. (This also abuts with T2.) And they turned him into a sad, but whining mom who laid her egg's in the middle of the midtown stadium where we wanted to go see U2 and the Knicks.
When there finally is some Transformers Autobot chatter ... seems like more than an hour of waiting for it ... it is cheesy as hell. But it is also what we wanted. It's like the world's worst Shakespeare coming out of the mouth of robots, that no matter how complex and numerous their parts, still don't read as human-like beings. Each is a caricature ... and again, great. There's the severe leader with a strong sense of humanity. There is Mr Fix It. And there is The Negro, the comedic robot from the "hood." (And you know what happens to the funny Black guy in all action movies, right?) And it is crazy and lame and stereotypical ... and FUN! That is the fun. And we have all to little of it.
And then there is the T2 of it all (and they got it from other iconic stories as well, but ... ). It's amazingly similar to Live Free or Die Hard, too. Nerd/Geek/Loser kid is the secret gem that the relentless robotic hero needs to save the world for unimaginable evil. By the end, the kid has come of age and gotten the girl against all odds. Of course, Ahnuld and Bald Bruce are both less robotic and more emotionally effective in fulfilling their roles. When Shia gets all misty-eyed about his robot, you're kind of waiting for him to throw him over as soon as his neato Power Rangers suit turns up in the mail from the costume house. (His dad went halfsies on it with him!) But it is good enough for the under-10 set, I guess.
The HUGE error in making Transformers was trying to turn it into something more than it is ... boy fantasy action fun ... Legos meet Hot Wheels at the earliest turn of puberty. And don't get me wrong. The fondness that some boys-turned-men have for this is not to be mocked (too hard). But Bay & Orci & Kurtzman treat this material like it is supposed to mean something. There is enough insane flyboy chatter over headsets that you think that Rob Cohen was ghostwriting. Really, it makes you appreciate George Lucas (and other Star Wars writers) for knowing enough to keep it to a minimum of chatter and technicality. No one cares what the coordinates are ... we want to trust the force.
This movie comes in at over two hours and if it was sliced back to 100 minutes, it might indeed have been in the $300 million club. The idea that there is some value in such Bayisms as a Transformer encounter in the Middle East or Tad Hamilton having an emotional moment via videophone with his blonde wife and child or listening to Jon Voight tear down our memories of his acting greatness as Old Guy In Charge or the endless crazy expositional dialogue is plain wrongheaded.
As stupid as having the blonde Aussie chick with the big eyes and blowjob lips being The Genius Of All Geniuses and having The Girl in the story be a filthy hot brunette with vein tight shirt and labia short skirt ... okay ... we'll go with that bit of boy bait. The unbelieving comedy parents are pretty much as expected (though they really aren't given a chance here to be unbelieving, since Shia doesn't take them into his confidence). Bernie Mac cameoing as a used car salesman ... I mean, he got paid.
But we came for the anthropomorphic robots that transform from cars and other stuff. 30 minutes of that and 60 minutes of filler and we're out. It reminds me of Brown Bunny, which got terribly panned at two hours plus and then was critically reprieved at 90 minutes ... which is just about as long as critics will wait to see Chloe Sevigny perform oral sex on screen.
Specifically, the fighting robots are a mixed bag in this film. They are cool, cool, cool. But none of the fights are any good in a choreographed movie way. They could have saved a lot of time and money just stealing a great fight from an old John Wayne movie and doing it with robots. There are all kinds of twists and turns, but even the big climactic moment - which I won't give away - leaves the audience wondering exactly what the heck happened.
I will give this tidbit away ... do we really think that shooting a Decepticon in the place when human men have testicles will do any more damage than shooting it someplace else? I don't.
And yet in the end ... it isn't bad enough to offend. It isn't good enough to defend. I can't imagine there is a person on the planet, other than Michael Bay or others on the film, who think that 30 minutes couldn't happily be struck from the film. And it will do very good business ... even if it isn't going to do $300 million kinda business.
This is the story of the summer so far ... it's like no one is satisfied doing what they do best ... they need to try for more ... they need to reach out to more quadrants than usual ... even Adam Sandler is going out with an R rating (Correction: Universal has moved I Pronounce You Chuck & Larry to a PG-13)... when they were doing great as they were ... and only the audience seems to know that overreaching means less competent films ... but still, enough show up to make everything just fine.
It makes me miss the ambition of AI and War of the Worlds, neither of which I thought worked, but both of which were products of someone's greater hopes. But even then, I think that Sam Raimi & Co were reaching for a more weighty Spider-Man this time out ... they just missed. Gore Verbinski wanted a darker, weirder version of Pirates ... and got in his own way a bit on basic storytelling. But neither was as ambitious as Spielberg ... or Mary Jane would be dead and Jack & Elizabeth would be married while wimpy whinny William would be talking about the good old days while doing escort duty for the dead.
In some ways, Transformers is much better than Live Free or Die Hard because Bay is so much more talented than Wiseman. On the other hand, Live Free or Die Hard is better than Transformers, because even though it devolves Die Hard into The Three Stooges With Guns, it is at least pretty consistent in that absurdity.
The fall can't get here soon enough.
E Me.
Week Of April 3, 2006 - Life In the Bubble - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 10, 2006 - List Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 17, 2006 - Review Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 24, 2006 - Overlooked Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
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Week Of May 8, 2006 - How We Watch Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 15, 2006 - Premature Week - Oscar Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 22, 2006 - B-13 Mon / Inconvenient Wed / Fri
Week Of May 29, 2006 - Wed / Fri
Week Of June 5, 2006 - 666 Tue / Iraq Doc Wed / Seattle Fri
Week Of June 12, 2006 - SIFF Mon / SIFF Wed / Fri
Week Of June 19, 2006 - Cinevegas Mon/Deliver Us Wed/Prada Fri
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Week Of July 12, 2006 - M. Night Mon | You, Me & Wed | Monster House Fri
Week Of July 17, 2006 - 8 A Year Mon / Water Wed / Revamp Fri
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Week Of July 31, 2006 - Mel G Mon / Talladega Wed / Fri
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Week Of February 26, 2007 - Rough Oscars Mon / Zodiac Wed / Doc & Foreign Fri
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March 14 / March 21/ March 28
Week Of April 4, 2007 - Wed / Grindhouse Fri
Week Of April 9, 2007 - Indie Distirbution Mon / Star Ranking Wed / Top 20 Fri
Week Of April 16, 2007 - Mon / Piaf Wed
Week Of April 23, 2007 - Mon / Tribeca Wed / Costner Fri
Week Of April 30, 2007 - Spider Mon
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Week Of May 28, 2007 - Knocked Up Friday
Week Of June 4, 2007 - Hostel 2 Mon / Ocean's Wed / Seattle Fri
Week Of June 11, 2007 - Sopranos Mon
Week Of June 18, 2007 - Mon / Sicko Wed
