My thoughts to the twelve million already out there....

Transformers is your typical Bay film: full of intense action but not a ton of plot. It's one of his good ones, one that works, is a bunch of fun to watch, and is amazingly impressive with its CGI.

Surprisingly, I didn't think it was big enough. I thought it could have been a bigger film, with a bigger finale. A good chunk of said climax is confined to one street, and that's just too small for the characters involved. Transformers needed a more grandiose going on. A big more bang.

I did find that I lost track of which Transformer was which during the battles - no surprise there.

But I thought the one-on-one robot vs robot action wasn't all that good. It was too brief, too many snippets, and not enough long sequences. Then there was a lot of "hiding" of the robots by sun flares, shadows, and the like. Even worse, the robots were often off-center in frame and then flailing completely outside the picture.

So, all in all, it's a pretty good, summer flick. Perhaps the best recommendation I can give is from my girlfriend. I dragged her, kicking and screaming, into a theater dominated by male geekdom. She doesn't do action films, doesn't do mindless stuff, and considers the latest depressing piece of nonfiction to be the best form of entertainment. Her thoughts, she liked it, saying "it's wasn't all that bad."