In celebration of our nation's birth, I'm going to treat you to my take on Transformers.
I'll get one point out of the way: it's not exactly horrible. Which for it is a huge victory and left me feeling like the movie wasn't half bad.
Except it's a Transformers movie. I can't describe to you the weirdness, the existential weirdness, of watching a Transformers movie. I sat there, thinking, I'm watching a Transformers movie. Really? Seriously. Get outta here.
It looks and sounds great. The effects set new bars for achieving photo-realism.
But, conceptually, I don't think it can be extricated from absurdity. Wait, the evil giant robots work on a kind of Godzilla level of destruction. But the good giant robots just can't exist in modern film, they can't rise above unbearable hokum: I think Optimus Prime told me to drink milk and listen to my parents at one point.
A scene of all the Autobots, the good guys, driving around in a part of California that apparently isn't California but a car commercial had me howling. I'm sorry, but a bunch of oddly mismatched vehicles (Camaro, semi-truck, ambulance, etc.) cruising around isn't awe inspiring. It just can't be. It looks like a traffic report.
There's just too much stupid here to discuss, even though it's entertaining enough, in its sledgehammer way. Go see Ratatouille.
About Me
- Paul
- Paul Guest is the author of four volumes of poetry and a memoir. His debut, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, was awarded the 2002 New Issues Poetry Prize. His second collection, Notes for My Body Double, was awarded the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His third collection, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, was published by Ecco Press/HarperCollins in 2008. His fourth collection, Because Everything Is Terrible, was published by Diode Editions. His poems have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, was published by Ecco in May 2010 and selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Whiting Writers' Award, Guest lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
3 comments:
I would definitely agree. I went and saw Ratatouille today (the weather here is crappy)with my kids and I laughed my ass off. I think that I enjoyed it more than them. Go figure.
You mean you weren't amused by the Autobot in blackface? Or the hilarious chihuahua pissing on a Transformer's foot?
And if the Autobot's learned English from the Internet and such, where the hell did Megatron learn English from? The ice?
I meant I totally LOVED the autobot in blackface. Especially when he did some breakdancing. That was great and the words 'minstrel show' never occurred to me.
I also totally loved the autobot pissing on John Turturro, prob. the greatest case of an actor slumming it I've seen. Of course, Orson Welles was in the original Transformers animated movie.
Megatron, uh....downloaded English. When he woke up? Like in The Matrix?
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