Transformers

What can you say about the Transformers film? It’s loud, hyperfast, utterly ridiculous, with dollops of American sentimentality that leave you choking, they’re so bad. The speed of the action makes you come out feeling like you’ve spent 90 minutes on the world’s fastest rollercoaster. Insanely fast, in fact.

But then again, what else did you expect from a film directed by Michael Bay, and based on a cartoon in the first place?

However, it’s also two and a half hours of pretty much non-stop action alongside some of the best special effects I’ve seen in ages. The robots don’t look like they’re computer generated – and it’s all done so well that you actually do suspend disbelief (well, until you’re given the chance to think about it, anyway) – it feels like the robots were just filmed as part of the action. And that’s impressive, however you look at it, and however you feel about American action films.

Mind you, it’s also interesting, seeing the way that some films now seem to be showing the law-enforcement agencies as being not always the good guys. Mind you, the person playing the part of the lead FBI-faction agency should’ve been shot at birth. He is awful, and the ‘performance’ (if you can call it that) jars with pretty much the rest of the film.

All told though, it’s a fantastic film, far more fun than either Spiderman 3 or Pirates 3 – both of which should have been fun, but weren’t. Both of those films felt far longer than their actual running time, whereas Transformers managed to feel like 90 minutes while actually being an hour longer than that.