Really.
They made me do it.
Considering how much I hated the last Transformers movie, surely wild horses couldn't drag me to a cinema showing the third one?
What can I say?
I'm weak.
I'm easily led.
I didn't have actually pay any money.
Please believe me, this was not my idea.
The annoying thing is, Michel Bay actually suckered me into believing this time might be different. The opening ten minutes present some genuinely interesting story possibilities. It's just the other six hours that are utterly unbearable.
Yes, this is an arse-numbingly long movie. It begins in the 60s, at the glorious highpoint of US history: the moon landing. The writers obviously wanted us to contrast this with the fall of the American Empire in the 21st century, and maybe there's some suggestion that the hubris that led man to walk on the moon ultimately brings about the downfall of this seemingly unstoppable world leader. Or something. Any suggestion of intelligent plot is jettisoned like a booster rocket as soon as T3 splashes down in 2011.
From then on in, we get more of exactly what you'd expect. Big fighting robots. Shia LaBeouf running, screaming and mugging for the camera. Some vacuous wooden underwear model who's drafted in to disprove the notion that Megan Fox is the worst actress in Hollywood. More sickening machine-porn and breathless disaster-porn than even Richard Hammond could dream of. And then... we get the Coen Brothers influence.
The last two Transformers movies have been graced by the smoked ham of John Turturro, slumming it for the paycheck - The Jesus would be ashamed. (And he's a pederast, dude.) This time, he's brought friends. Not just John Malkovich with shiny teeth and Bad Comedy controls turned up to 11... but Mrs. Coen herself, Frances McDormand. My god, Frances - what are you doing? My only hope is that your hubby and brother-in-law needed a cash boost for their next project and your appearance here is just a charity appeal. Any other explanation is too depressing to consider.
Still, let's look on the bright side. Transformers 3 isn't quite as bad as 2... in the same way that losing a testicle to a threshing machine isn't quite as bad as losing your whole scrotum.
