In this live-action re-imagining of the Transformers, Sam Witwicky is the great-grandson of an explorer who discovered an “ice man” (really a giant robot that had crashed into the ice) while exploring within the arctic circle. At the start of the movie, Sam is just getting his first car — a 1976 Camaro. Gradually, he comes to discover that there’s more to his new car than meets the eye, and, thanks to his great-grandfather’s legacy, finds himself drawn into the middle of a war between two groups of giant, transforming robots.

All in all, this is a pretty good summer action movie, and it’s made a bit better by the nostalgia factor. If you were a fan of the original cartoon, or if you just really, really want to see giant robots fighting each other, then it’s worth going to see.

A few spoiler-y comments below the cut.

My biggest problem with this film is one that a friend of mine had worried about before the movie’s release. There’s way too much focus on human characters, which leaves no real time for any of the Transformers themselves to get much characterization. Optimus Prime and Bumblebee are the only two Autobots who get to have much in the way of personality (the others get a couple of one-liners here and there meant only to reinforce their one-note personalities spelled out in their introductory scene), and the only Decepticon who gets any at all is Frenzy. I would’ve gotten Sam drawn into the conflict a bit earlier (giving the other Autobots more screen time), and just let him be the audience’s primary “viewpoint character”, without the additional focus on the Army special forces unit and the Secretary of Defense’s team of hackers.

Also, why does no one act particularly surprised when Bumblebee speaks at the end of the movie? They’d taken great pains to ensure that we knew his speech circuits were damaged, and when he simply asks Optimus for permission to stay with “the boy”, no one seems particularly surprised — even though Ratchet(?) seemed to think that he was beyond repair earlier in the movie (My guess is that the Allspark healed him much as it did Frenzy earlier, so I’m not really bothered by the fact that he was healed; just that no one seemed to think anything of it). Also, if the Autobots can’t fix something little like speech circuits, what the heck is Bumblebee going to do now that the bottom parts of his legs have been ripped off?

Michael Bay made a few decisions regarding slow-motion in this film that struck me as a bit odd. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the first of these. Scorponok jumps out of the sand, chasing three Army soldiers, who are running away. The other one that really stood out took place in a part of the final battle. Two Transformers are battling, and the camera snaps to a slow-motion close-up on a woman we’ve never seen before (and who we’ll never see again), who is crying as the giant robots battle behind her. The first instance just briefly annoyed me, because it seemed unnecessary. The second, though, bewildered me. It seemed completely out of place with the rest of the movie.