/ 1 July 2011

Mark of the ‘toon

Mark Of The 'toon

Transformers: Dark of the Moon should be on Ritalin, or whatever it is they give hyperactive kids nowadays.

Despite taking about 40 minutes of its inordinate 154-minute running time to start the action proper, this third Transformers movie has a jumpy storyline that lacks smooth development, and the eye-boggling action sequences have only one pace setting: ultra-fast. Watching it is rather like being repeatedly assaulted by a feral kitchen appliance.

Having missed the second instalment of what is now a trilogy, I’m probably lacking some information that would help connect the dots in part three. For instance, there’s the soldier or pilot played by Tyrese Gibson, who pops up, mid-story, in what seems like a coincidental manner, disappears, and then reappears just in time to utter some Independence Day clichés and participate in the final battle.

One can only conclude that he played a key role in the second Transformers movie and if one had seen that it would all make sense, or at least Gibson’s presence would feel less like a cut-and-paste job.

Earth-saving skills
Oddly, the film does make an attempt to introduce new viewers to the Transformers idea, beginning with one of those prologues with a stentorian voice telling us about the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons on the plant Cybertron, a war that led ultimately to the situation faced today by the movie’s protagonists. Of course Earth is now confronting yet another threat of annihilation, and it’s up to the good robots and the good people to save it — again.

For star Shia LaBoeuf has saved Earth, or at least humanity, twice already — as he reminds us, and some of his fellow actors, just so we know where we stand. Yet he can’t get a job, skilled though he is in Earth-saving; it seems the Transformers project has been taken over by the CIA and he is no longer deemed useful. He’s also referred to as a “teenager”, which he may have been in the first movie, but is certainly no longer.

Then again, Hollywood has a long tradition of casting actors in their 20s or even 30s as youths of high-school age, so perhaps that’s a convention the movie’s likely viewers would understand and accept.

In the first Transformers, LaBoeuf discovered the presence on Earth of the Autobots, who are the good robots (if they are robots — I’m not entirely clear on this). Their enemies are the Decepticons, whose name itself rather gives the game away. In Transformers: Dark of the Moon they are indeed being deceptive or perhaps decepticonnish, for there’s a dastardly plan afoot to colonise Earth and reduce all humanity to slavery. I’m not sure why these creatures, each of whom obviously has the strength of about a thousand humans, need human slaves, but that’s a moot point.

Both kinds of Transformers can, er, transform themselves, in the blink of an eye, from what looks like a fairly ordinary automobile into a massive clanking killer machine. Usually they go about disguised as cars or trucks, but when trouble threatens they change themselves into these mechanical beasts of roughly human form and start fighting.

This element of the movie is fun, though the fun is rather dulled by constant repetition. The transformations and the action are surely instances of present-day CGI at its most skilled, and full use has been made of the Dolby 3D technology to make it all as visually striking as possible. Perhaps it was the new equipment at the screening theatre where the movie was shown, or the impressively solid Dolby 3D spectacles, but for the first time I felt I was watching a 3D movie that was actually in focus.

Preposterous explanations

There’s not much more to be said about Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The subtitle relates to the first American moon landing, which we now discover was about more than just competing with the Russians. There is one amusing sequence in which a paranoid character tries to convey the significance of this to LaBoeuf (in a toilet stall, moreover, and with reference to Pink Floyd), but mostly it’s just hammered into the viewer’s head in a sort of catechism of repeated statement, with the occasional preposterous explanation thrown in.

LaBoeuf has a certain charm, no doubt, as shown by the fact that he has a new girlfriend (Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley). She’s certainly pretty and pouty, but we also have to be subjected to some retrospective justification for the absence of Megan Fox, who was in the first two Transformers films alongside LaBoeuf. The filmmakers obviously couldn’t just say that Fox had ducked out of the franchise because she found director Michael Bay fascist and sexist.

The character actors, here, have the greatest opportunity to shine. Frances McDormand, as a CIA director, has a delightfully wry way with a line, and John Malkovich and his fake tan are given space to be very funny. John Turturro, as a somewhat mad former agent, is also excellent, though in a pretty ridiculously over-the-top way.

These three actors help to give the movie some non-mechanical life — it feels a bit like a reunion of Coen brothers alumni.

Apart from them, it’s the self-transforming machines that seize most of the viewer’s attention in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, as perhaps befits a movie with origins in a cartoon world. This is all allegedly about saving humanity and Earth, but the humans are really downgraded to bit players in a mechanised drama of against-the-odds salvation. It’s unclear why the Autobots really want to save us, or what’s worth saving, but don’t worry — they’re on our side.

Not the Movie of the Week: Frightening Flops and Fabulous Flicks, a selection of Shaun de Waal’s movie reviews over the past 13 years, with added extras, is published by Tafelberg