I was a bit apprehensive when I heard Transformers was being made by Michael Bay. First, because I saw the animated Transformers movie when I was a kid and it was the defining moment of my life for the next ten years and second because I hate Michael Bay movies.

So if you share either or probably both of those sentiments you can understand my apprehension when I went to see Transformers. I figured I’d have a better chance at a green card lottery than enjoying this movie.

What surprised me about the movie first was the lack of transformers. I guess Bay felt it was more important to develop the human characters than worry about what should have been the focus of the movie. In the cartoon series and the animated movie, when the transformers – both Autobot and Decepticons – were in robot form they had distinguishing features. In Transformers, all of the transformers in robot mode looked pretty much the same and all became very flat one dimensional supporting characters. Or maybe that’s just a characteristic of Michael Bay movies. So Michael Bay depended on the human characters to make Transformers a success. It’s like putting up all your chips in Poker Texas Hold'em with a pair of 2s.; not the best idea. It’s a movie about robots from another world and the focus is on some run-of-the-mill humans that appear everywhere. At least the humans cast were decent.

Shia LaBeouf is surprisingly decent as the lead of a movie that should be about giant battling robots not human teenagers. It would have been preferable for Shia LaBeouf’s role to be more minimal like Spike’s role in the original Transformers movie. Spike was supplemental to the movie because no one really cared about Spike. I didn’t really care about Shia LaBeouf’s character either and was just waiting for the transformers to show up.

And on a side note, why so much Bumblebee? No one liked Bumblebee when transformers were all the rage 20 years ago. He was a $3 toy compared to the $20 Optimus Prime and Megatron. Clearly someone didn’t bother to learn to spell bingo correctly.

At least there was the superb support of Rachael Taylor. While her part was smaller than LaBeouf’s and Fox’s, at least she understood that the movie was called Transformers. That is to say, she played her part well and wasn’t pushing the transformers out of the frame. Her quiet beauty and excellent acting contributed much more to the movie that the loud and boisterous run amok action. She was integral to the story; she brought various parts together and kept the story flowing well but didn’t dominate the movie. Sometimes less is more.

There was so much product placement in this movie it was ridiculous. One of the transformers was a mobile phone solely for product placement. That was a bit of mobile gambling; how much product placement can be tolerated before it becomes nauseating? When did the movie plot and characters become subservient to the advertisers? I’m surprised there wasn’t a transformer that turned into an online casino. I guess that would have been too far.

All in all, I was pretty disappointed by the movie. I found myself caught up in the action and the unnecessarily loud and confusing fight scene- but after the movie was over, I felt like I hadn’t seen anything. It was an empty and quick pleasure without any sustainable feeling.