So, there's this film that everyone is talking about at the moment.

I wasn't impressed.


Now, I'm not a major TF movie hater, like some of the fans out there. I really loved the first movie, warts and all. There are giant robots in it, they turn into stuff, and there are some neat fights. Some of the jokes are fun, some are just pointlessly crude. And I know that this movie is going to suffer from the fact that it can no longer create that initial squee of seeing my childhood heroes on the big screen.

And yes, there was a lot of awesome. Optimus, especially, was great, both in his fight scenes and as a diplomat. He is especially hardass in this one, in a take no prisoners kind of way. Bumblebee rocked. Jetfire was great, even if they got carried away with the old man jokes. The Megatron and Starscream dynamic was fun. The humans were less obnoxious.

But my god. Mudflap and Skids. They went up to what might have been another flawed-but-fun movie and then shat on it. You know what would be better than an Jar-Jar Binks in this movie? If he was a robot, and there were two of them! (tumblecoyote referenced a place calling them "Car-Car Binks", which makes me glad I'm not the only one who made the comparison.) They can have big ears and talk trash, one of them can have buck-teeth (one of which is gold!) And you can make a point of them saying they don't like to read! And have one of them drop the N-bomb (or so I'm told, though I didn't catch that when I saw it.)

They were such offensive black stereotypes. So of course, do we see them once or do they practically carry the movie in places, to the detriment of other characters? Thaaaat's right.

I think Michael Bay needs to get someone else to write humour for him. Some of his stuff is good. Bumblebee was fantastic, very expressive. And then you have a stoned forty-something woman tackling people and stealing frisbees. And robot testicles. And action sequences that for some reason cut to dogs humping.

And don't get me wrong, I don't mind off-colour humour, when it's clever. But this was crassness for the sake of it.

I think that what bothers me most is that these things were left in when so much more had been left out. Like, some actual personalities for the Autobots. Or some decent face time. I mean, Arcee and Sideswipe have a couple of lines, but are never seen in robot mode except for ultra-blurry action sequences. Ratchet does nothing medical. We barely get screentime for anyone. And I get that an expanded cast means less screen time to share. So why do established characters get very little face time in favour of humping dogs and robo-dick jokes?

I want to like this movie. There is stuff that is excellent. But, eh. I wasn't impressed with the second Spider-Man movie when I first saw it, and in a week I thought it was the best. We'll see how time influences my feelings on this movie.