Transformers: The Movie

I'm 33 years old.

I played with Transformers toys for the better part of my years in elementary school, and watched the tv show religiously every afternoon. Though I hadn't thought about the Transformers for about two decades, my curiosity was piqued when I heard that they would be making a movie.

The trailers shattered what little confidence I still had in Hollywood and I expected the worst. Believing that this was going to be one incredible stinker, I decided that I would probably not waste my money on this movie. . . But today I had the day off. The forecast was for heavy rain throughout the day, which would prevent me from enjoying the outdoors. I hurt myself helping my brother move last Sunday, which means that I couldn't go to the gym. So catching a movie appeared to be one of my few options.

Against my better judgement, I decided to give Transformers: The Movie a shot. And I was pleasantly surprised!:-) Okay, so the story is on the thin side, but who expected this to be the second coming of Schindler's List? The special effects are great and there's a LOT of action. So much so that the battle scenes are a bit too fast, which prevents us from following the what's happening. It is at times a little hard to differentiate the robots from one another, especially the Decepticons.

Despite its flaws, the remarkable thing about this movie is that it made me feel like a kid again. And in a way, that's priceless. I couldn't help grinning like a simpleton when Optimus Prime first showed up. Megatron is a jet instead of a canon, which kind of sucks. And Soundwave is now a little annoying robot. As a camaro, Bumblebee is much cooller than in the cartoon. The Autobots all have personalities, but the Decepticons, for some unknown reason, do not. That's too bad, since as a kid I was always rooting for the bad guys. I only collected Decepticons back in the days, with only a few Autobots in my collection. When I played with my G. I. Joes with my brother, Cobra always won. And I had a headless Luke Skywalker, for Darth Vader always beheaded him when I called the shots! So I was a bit disappointed that the Decepticons didn't do much more than destroy everything in sight.

All in all, a very entertaining movie. If you were a fan as a kid, you'll especially enjoy this one! Your inner child should resurface for the duration of Transformers: The Movie.