TRANSFORMERS (Dir. Michael Bay)
I've been feeling ill recently. 'Under the weather', as those of you who don't want to make things obvious may put it. But Michael Bay loves making things obvious. It's totally his favourite thing to do, like, ever. He makes things so bloody obvious that you practically wonder why he's pointing them out at all. Let's take an example: in his 2007 film Transformers, one of the 'Autobots' is a poorly disguised, almost offensive Afro-American stereotype, fo' shizzle. There's no doubting it. When Shia LaBeouf (probably the only person I enjoyed watching in the movie, other than that Australian girl) asks him how he learned to speak like that, he states 'the Internet'. Well, what I learnt from the internet is how to be overcritical and think I have a valid opinion, so I'll practice that here.

Transformers is an action film, yes. It's a popular film, yes. It's by no means my type of film. But I watched it all the way through. Why? Because it's an adrenalin rush of a flick, it's fast-paced and you somehow can sit through all 144 minutes of it. And yes, the Australian girl. But it's so deeply submerged in immoral, super-obvious postmodern masochism that it's hard to see its immediate virtues. I don't mean to take a feminist stance here (believe me, I'm not one), but Megan Fox is treated like shit by both LaBeouf's character and Michael Bay. It's amazing that this sort of female character is still apparent in modern cinema. Combine this with the African-American stereotype (akin to the two black passengers in Airplane, but that was 1980) and a plotline dumb enough to be comprehended by a brick with a fetish for explosions, robot sounds and oversaturated cinematography, and you have a movie set to gross $700m.

This film has no modern significance, will probably fade away in about ten years' time and will never stand as an example of anything other than 00s shit filmmaking. I'm pretty glad about that. Of course, it's silly to even discuss such a film as being on the same level as 'important cinema', but as a reviewer I'm afforded this irrelevant snobbishness so I'm going to damn well use it. The effects are good, the cinematography is exciting, and the ambition of the writers to include every 21st century American cliché possible (hot girlfriend, embarrassing parents, Chihuahua, deep-voiced wise guy, something about the president) is admirable. But it's still not a good movie. If I could say only one thing to Michael Bay (and I have many things), it would probably be "stop being so ignorant and make films that have some character development, racial decency, and emotional depth to them."

Either that or "you're an asshole."

★★☆☆☆