Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 40

TRANSFORM YOUR IMAGINATION.

I walked into the movie theater with my two step-nephews (8 & 9) with the presumption that this movie might have a lot of extreme carnage in it like Spielberg’s last movie that I saw, The War of the Worlds. However, these toys of my youth had transformed themselves into movie stars of my nephew’s youth and I couldn’t resist delving myself into a night of fun with my two hang arounds.

This movie’s content was very smartly crafted by way of remembering who the general audience’s were going to be. It has childish humor, Bumblebee (the Camero) ‘draining’ his fluids on a S7 G-guy. There is enough teenage humor in it, performed by Shia Labeouf, that it reminded me of my younger dating days – if only I had Bumblebee back in those days! And, since it can be classified as a war movie in a variety of ways, it has it’s adult, story behind the story theme.

For instance, “Their War, Our World”, can easily be translated into our, the U.S.’s, war on terror in Iraq. The Autobots are the coalition forces, the Deceptocons are al Quaida, and the USAF soldiers are the Iraqis who are fighting in concert with the coalition forces. There is more to this story than meets the eye, but I’m going to refrain from making this into a political bruhaha.

And that was one of the things that I liked about this movie. It was packed with action, special effects, storyline, acting – and it rolled it all into a way that each age group would be able to enjoy it at their own level.

Now, there is truly no critic like a child critic. I took both of these guys to see Spiderman 3 and not much was said after the movie. However, before we could even walk out of that movie theater it was a complete night and day because every single thing they saw they imagined it would transform into some kind of robot. The soda fountain machine, cars in the parking lot, the stop sign, the stop light, motorcycles, and on and on. The younger of the two asked me what would happen if a house transformed to which I replied that we already have those – they’re called mobile homes. But, by far my personal favorite was also the younger’s imagination at work while at Taco Bell, “What if the cash machine transformed and gave us all money!” If you can capture a child’s imagination like that, then you know this will be a mainstay form of entertainment for years to come.