Transformers: Dark Of The Moon - Cinema Review

'best surmised by a scene late on where Huntington-Whiteley is framed in near still-shot as all sorts of chaos and explosions discover the joys of combustion behind her. Don't mind the actors Michael, just make sure there's a good quota of things blowing up'

Before Michael Bay indulges in what is becoming an increasingly infamous 'ass shot' (Bay's camera lurks behind franchise newcomer Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's stair climbing, like a flasher lurking behind a bush) Transformers: Dark Of The Moon spends an effective twenty-minutes or so setting up the events of this third outing in the series. Archive footage of the 1969 moon landings is mixed to good effect with a conspiracy theorist-baiting setup that has Buzz Aldrin (Cory Tucker) and Neil Armstrong (Don Jeanes) discovering a crashed Autobot ship on the, erm... dark side of the moon. It's goosepimple-inducing in its effectiveness and it initially looks like a good idea to revitalise a franchise that looked like it had stalled with Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen.

Then there's the ass shot. Then Huntington-Whiteley speaks. Then two comedy sidekicks emerge. Then Sam's (Shia LaBeouf) parents turn up. We're back in familiar territory again and that familiar territory belongs to the poorly acted, poorly scripted first sequel which, sadly, Dark Of The Moon has too much in common with.

Bay's well-publicised directorial problem is that, for all his action skills, he just can't direct quiet scenes between people. Worse than that though, Ehren Kruger appears not to be able to write them. It's notable that Kruger has scripted the last two Transformers films meaning that the only one that was any good had nothing to do with him. I seriously doubt that that is a coincidence. Clichéd dialogue runs rampant, scenes which aren't meant to be awkward come across as such, scenes which are meant to be awkward (the obligatory parental chat) come across as annoying. That said, when the actors do get chance to say something meaningful they infrequently mess it up. Huntington-Whiteley is, at best, wooden and at worst abysmal and because of that there's no chemistry between her and LaBeouf, rendering a crucial aspect to the predictable narrative redundant. It's a cacophony of laziness and poor understanding of narrative cinema, best surmised by a scene late on where Huntington-Whiteley is framed in near still-shot as all sorts of chaos and explosions discover the joys of combustion behind her. Don't mind the actors Michael, just make sure there's a good quota of things blowing up.

The things blowing up reach a head in the final hour where an epic battle in Chicago shows Cloverfield just how traverses across lopsided buildings should be done and a group of base jumping special forces employees manage to find some beauty in amongst all the ridiculousness. Still, it is the epitome of too much, too late: it is not enough to forget the mountains of guff experienced up till this point including various plot holes (where does John Malkovich go?), various characters we don't give a hoot about and more screen time in the company of several very annoying and poorly voiced robots than anyone should have to endure.

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'We see close-ups of character's faces but they seem devoid of any emotional connection. Conversations feel clumsy and nobody resembles a human. Some ignore this based on a bizarre ideal that you should pay full price for nearly half a movie, especially if it's in 3D IMAX' - The Afrofilmviewer