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Friday, April 26, 2024
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HOLLYWOOD TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: **
Ever since the first part, the "Transformer" series has been abysmally
stupid, cinematically crass and viscerally dumb. But then going by the new
capitalistic mantra for cinema, anything that sells cannot be dumb. Thus you
have another version of the same film you`ve seen twice before starring
teenagers whose range of emotions are fewer than creases on a child`s cheek and
lots of machines shifting from cars to robots, bleeding oil.
The story has never been the strong point of "Transformers" and even
here as well it is best described in one sentence - after learning of a crashed
spaceship from their planet on the dark side of the moon, the benign Autobots
race to find it before the Decepticons do.
It isn`t the background score that has been its strength either - in the din of
squealing robots, there`s no space for any. As far as acting goes, the human
actors are more robotic than the robots.
The strength of "Transformers" is its special effects. Indeed one look
at any of the three films and it seems that the only purpose they exist is so as
to excite our perverse senses, through teenage skin show, or through the loud,
crass violence that goes on and on in the film. Thus violence and booty junkies,
which the world is full of, would simply trip on this film.
There are desperate attempts at bringing some emotions though some bad teenage
jealousies, or honour in Optimus Prime respecting human decision to exile them.
But all these fall like a pack of cards at the altar of teenage titillation,
pointless jingoism, and mindless violence.
Like the other two "Transformer" films, after a point you forget who`s
fighting who. All you see is big metal things transforming mid-air and slashing
one another. And that`s about all there is to the film indeed. Watching it is
like children sitting in front of the TV, watching anything just because
something is moving on the screen.
Megan Fox is replaced by supermodel Rosie Huntington-Whiteley who like Ben
Stiller`s character in the satire "Zoolander", seems to have only one
pouted-lips expression in the entire film.
The only metaphor that this version of the successful franchise ends up drawing,
just like the other two, is against a visually challenged and overwhelmed
society that needs extremities of visual stimulations to like something. And
that is something that is neither good for cinema, or for society.
