July 4th and Optimus Prime

Monday, 8:00 pm, I was in the Barry Road AMC theater (Kansas City, MO) watching the preview showing of Transformers: the Movie. I must say I fell in love. Tuesday, 10:10 pm, I was in the Hollywood 14 theater (Columbia, MO) watching Transformers again. Wednesday, 12:30 pm, I was back in Hollywood 14 watching Transformers for the third time. Having seen the movie three times, I have to confess that it might be my all-time favorite movie.

There was everything in this movie that I wanted: good acting, humor, romance, action, suspense/drama. It was all there. The movie did an excellent job of balancing the robot-human ratio that I feared was going to lean too far to one side. Shia LeBeouf was absolute hilarious for the first hour of the movie. But when he turned action star, it was a believable leap for the mind. The same thing with Megan Fox, she was the typical shallow high school girl. But when the action came, her growth was believable.

The Transformers themselves were absolutely amazing. The look of the robots were beautiful. The action that the robots performed was incredible. It is well worth the twenty plus years since the first movie for this one. My biggest complaint is that Starscream does not scream or plot against Megatron, but I didn’t realize that until I talked to someone else about the movie. I was that engaged by the film, plus Starscream was so cool in the movie that I didn’t care. At first, I couldn’t tell that Megatron was voiced by Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from The Matrix Trilogy) but during the second and third viewings, I could hear the vocal mannerisms of Hugo Weaving. So, really, my complaints aren’t really all that important to me, especially with Starscream and the ending.

When I left that theater, I could only say, “You just don’t mess with Prime!” And I felt that after all three trips. I give this movie five stars, my objections don’t merit loosing a star. Go and see this movie. Event he previews were amazing, the Simpson’s Movie preview was hilarious. The “Godzilla?” preview was incredible, no title, just J.J. Abram’s name as executive producer. Incredible. Go see this movie and enjoy a comedy and action movie married into one film.