Terrific review of the execrable Transformers movie

Thank goodness Michael Bay made the new Transformers movie, because if he hadn't Charlie Jane Anders wouldn't have written this stupendous review for io9.

Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that's because people don't understand that this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense. It's an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Hanglyman

If anyone goes to see a movie they know was directed by Michael Bay, they really deserve what they get at this point. Still, he’s not as bad as Uwe Boll, whose abysmal movies get written off his taxes if they don’t make a profit, and whose idea of responding to criticism is to beat up his critics in a boxing match (unless they might actually have an advantage over him).
Darren Garrison

The best review I’ve seen is spread across multiple segments in this thread on rottentomatoes:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=685674

Wherein is coined the fitting term “niggabots”
Francesco Fondi

TRANSFORMERS 2 is “robo porno”: you don’t watch porno for the story…
Halloween Jack

“…like little Irish setters.”

I’ve said some pretty critical things about Charlie Jane Anders’ posts on io9 in the past. I take it all back.
Kieran O’Neill

I take it the film is as much of a propaganda exercise for the U.S. armed forces as the first?
Anonymous

The first thing I thought when I read the movie title was Transformers: Rolling On The Floor.
Kieran O’Neill

Oh, and best movie review evar.

If the film is even half as crazed as Anders’ writing, I think I’ll have to watch it just for the experience.

At the lowest cost possible, of course.
nosehat

If Michael Bay were to direct The Great Gatsby.
anansi133

This is perfect: I now know to watch T:ROFL after I finish all five Cremaster films.
alphagirl

I still like the review Joel posted by Choire Sicha just a smidge better.

http://www.theawl.com/2009/06/flicked-off-transformers2-the-revenge-of-megan-foxs-rack
hokano

In fact, I believe it was the examination of the Michael Bay oeuvre that required the invention of the word ‘craptacular’.
Anonymous

I actually said the same thing about Speed Racer … except I wasn’t joking.
hokano

TRANSFORMERS 2 is “robo porno”: you don’t watch porno for the story…

But 2.5 hours? You may be right, but in that case the movie might have been better if it had the same duration as the average ’3.mpg’.
Anonymous

Yeah…I don’t think you should all be rubbishing Michael Bay so much, personally I havent seen ROTF but I actually really enjoyed the first Transformers movie. Yes it was an assult on the senses, but so is a rollercoaster, or a flight in a Pitt Special, strangely so is the Transformers cartoon, ironic that the movie should follow suit.
Don’t think so much and enjoy the ride.

Drew.
hokano

The Onion keeps us abreast of what we can expect next:
Michael Bay Signs $50M Deal To Fuck Up ‘ThunderCats’
Brainspore

I actually think “an assault on the senses” is a pretty good description of Michael Bay’s work. If only I could collect damages…
Anonymous

Michael Bay’s work is essentially a syncopated assemblage of over-saturated mechaical carnage. These are such weird movies, I cannot even begin to imagine what their appeal is. I see enough chaos at work, on my way to work and on the television, why do I need more? The movies are a literal vision of what the aggressively hollow hollywood machine looks like. His Pearl Harbor was retchingly awful. I actually think his movies are much worse than your average, straight-up bad movie. When you think about it there’s is something vaguely offensive about what he does, but not in direct Natural Born Killers sort of way. Anders gets it right. I’d actually read a few favorable reviews that seem to praise this movie-http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20286964,00.html.
And yet he doesn’t seem like a very bad guy, kinda humble, he even went to Wesleyan!
orangebag

michael bay throws cgi explosions on the screen with little artistry.
That reviewer throws allegedly impressive vocabulary and references at his keyboard with little wit and no artistry.
As self indulgent as the film he was mocking.

Or perhaps that was the point. If so, he should remember that merely being meta doesn’t mean you are funny anymore.

4 out of 10
Anonymous

Transformers are a ripoff of Go-bots, so I hate them. Poor little Go-bots.
Uniquack

In the last few days, I’ve noticed a slew of critics feasting on the ripe flesh of ROTF to write great reviews. Here’s another one from Seattle: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/dear-nerds-i-have-some-questions/Content?oid=1740991
acb

Was the original Transformers cartoon as steeped in red-state Republican/Southern “warrior” values as the films, or did Michael Bay bring those to the table?
Anonymous

Reads like Harry Knowles. Preferred the reviews by Roger Ebert and Manohla Dargis in NYT.
Crawford Tillinghast

My sight-unseen capsule review of this is the same as for the last one:

Transformers?

FUCK that shit!

SURVIVAL…

RESEARCH…

LABS!!!!!!!!!!
Boba Fett Diop

This seems appropriate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pM8PrqY5Rg
caldrax

I am baffled that there are people here, and there, responding to this review as if it genuinely is hailing Transformers as a good movie. Is sarcasm really THAT hard to read on the internet? You’d think the casual mention of “6 hours into the movie” would do the trick and people would start to comprehend that the writing is not meant to be taken seriously.

This review was genius and while I feel guilty for paying to see the film, it was a spectacle. A literal and figurative car crash. I simply could not avoid watching it because I felt compelled to experience first hand the most excessive abuse of money and resources ever to vomit itself forth from Hollywood. I was not disappointed. Oh and it’s good to see some GM vehicles on the road again. Damn, I wonder how much of the bailout money went into product placement in this horrorshow…
Brett Burton

This review of
TRANSFORMERS: ROTF
is
TRANSFORMERS: ROTFL
orangebag

the bbc review linked in #14 is funnier and will take less time. but it is a video.
nehpetsE

Sounds very much like Showgirls, (if all of the show girls were late model GM cars)

Now i kind of want to see it.

I love movies where you don’t have to wait for stuff to happen.
Anonymous

I liked it.
elk

Awesome, so where’s the rallying cry for Gilliam then? Sadly missing.
Anonymous

I actually liked the movie, to be honest.
but really wish they’d get rid of bay and get someone who can do transformers right for the next one
Brainspore

Bad comparison. Gilliam makes movies, Bay makes commercials. Big, two-hour, explodey commercials for Pepsi and GM and Mattel and Microsoft and whoever else has a few million to spare in their advertising budget.
Anonymous

There is a flaw with that review.

Setters don’t point. Pointers point.
Murray_H

This is film criticism at its finest. When the revoluton comes, Michael Bay will be dragged into a latrine pit and shot. I’m not saying I condone this — I’m just saying it’s going to happen.

McG will be there too.
doktor tchock

i think that if this review were adapted into a film by Michael Bay, it would signal the end times were near.
overunger

@29 : Probably, but Gobots SUCKED!!! I DID like the early large ones that were VW bugs.

Maybe the third movie will have Unicron!
gbv23

It did boffo box office and that’s all that matters.
This is America dude, learn the rules
stratojoe

ah.. so -thats- what it feels like to be brain raped.
Anonymous

If you like that review, check out this review from the BBC’s Mark Kermode
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/2009/06/transformers_190609.html