Now, let me preface this evisceration by saying that I love transformers toys. I was in my mid-twenties when they came out, and I remember the first one I saw, and I thought, DAMN I wish they had had these when I was a kid! (I do own an illegally created Thomas the Tank Engine transformer toy because it made me laugh...). So I think the transformers are way cool, in theory, even though they are pretty much the first instance of a toymaker coming up with a toy and then creating a tv show starring that toy to sell a whole bunch of them.

But I digress.

So the movie. Which I missed in the theaters.

Maid-of-Awesome says she told me it sucked. I have no memory of this, I just remembered several people telling me that it was good. So when Mr. Otter had a day he was going to be out late, I got this on Blu-Ray from the library (the better to see the special effects with, my dear), had a junk food and comics day, and watched this that evening.

And all those people? they were wrong, and Maid-of-Awesome was right: it was two and a quarter hours of suckage.

It was so bad I pulled out my computer and made the following list WHILE I WATCHED IT:

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE TRANSFORMERS MOVIE (that are not actually true)

In no particular order:
• Beautiful women who are thrown through the air and slide/roll on concrete are still beautiful when they get up.

• It's sad when a cute good-guy robot alien "dies" even when you know he's not REALLY gone, they'll fix him.

• Bikes are as fast as cars, no matter which one is in the lead.

• Humans on foot can go faster than huge evil robots.

• It's easy to drive backwards in a tow truck with a huge robot on the back blocking your mirrors.

• Nobody notices robots when they don't want to be noticed, no matter how much they hum, whirr or talk to themselves. Or how big they are.

• Guns can't hurt robots but a girl with a tire iron can destroy one.

• If two robots battle on top of humans, the humans will not be hurt.

• Actually, no matter how much the robots are trying to kill/hurt humans, very few humans get hurt.

• The good robots are brightly colored. The bad robots are not.

• If your car drives itself, you will still get into it to go places.

• If you are on a bike and trying to escape a car, you will NEVER go anywhere a car can't go.

• Having a robot take off Shia LeBeouf's pants is ALWAYS funny.

• Robots peeing is always funny.

• The bad robot can't get an item from a human five feet away (like by killing him or at least stomping on him til he stops moving) but must chase him, snarling and threatening, while he crawls away,

• The good guy will do the stupidest possible thing at the end of the movie and it will save the world.

• Robots can carry two humans in the palm of one hand, but when the same robot picks up a pair of ordinary eyeglasses the glasses are half as wide as his palm. How the heck big are those damn glasses?

• An evil FBI agents in loud underwear is always funny. (AND you get the whole pants-off thing)

• If you need to steal code from the pentagon you can just copy it on a two gig flash drive and walk out with it. Nobody will search or stop you, or even notice.

• If you have supersescret code from the pentagon, the best hacker IN THE WORLD will be just a taxi ride away.

• Nobody notices electronics in the wrong place, like a boom box in an elevator on Air Force 1.

• The bad robots are always stupider than the good robots, even though they look like exactly the same kind of robots.

• If your car turns into a giant robot then back into a car, you get in.

• Robot cars got FEELINGS.

• Camaros are cool.

• If something gigantic is bending the huge metal doors in, barracading them with desks will help.

• Giant robots can be hip-hop. It's cool or something.

• And they have giant cute faces, whereas the bad robots (who look like exactly the same kind of robots) have scary faces.

• Robots can say cute things. No matter how big and scary they are; this makes them friendly.

• And they speak cute English and make jokes, even when talking with each other, instead of robot or alien or whatever they would normally speak. They have a different written language than we do, why don't they speak another language among themselves? the bad guys do...

• Bad robots have red eyes.

• If you tell the feds that there is a cube that everyone is fighting over that could destroy the universe, the feds will immediatly take you to see it, even though you are a known buddy of one batch of the alien robots who are looking for it. Oops, and thus the bad guys find it. (typing this as it happens onscreen)

• Radiation will turn a cell phone into a tiny evil spider robot with way more parts than the original phone, made of indestructible metal. The phone companies could use this.

• If your building loses power, the backup generator will not have enough power, so there is a plot crisis. (Why do you have a backup generator if it's not strong enough to power your machines when the power goes out?)

• As soon as the high-level good guys, the kids who are going to save us all, the major bad guy and the thing they all want are in the same place, all hell will break loose.

• The Good Robots will not hurt humans, even when the humans richly deserve it.

• A gigantic electronic/metal cube can become a small, easily carried (by a HUMAN) cube (weighs about a pound, it looks like) because when it changes size, it completely changes its mass.

• Parents are always stupid.

• Robots shoot just as badly as humans.

• Chihuahuas are cute.

1. Do you say Present Arms when you don't actually have any arms and are just coming to attention and saluting? (yes, says Mr. Otter, you do. Okay, my bad.)

2. Megan Fox may have a hot bod, but damn, she is dumb lookin' in the face, as we say chez Otter. She'd give Vin Diesel a run for his money.*

3. Even on a 52 inch screen in blu-ray (thanks Spider Jerusalem) this is just a really stupid and kinda dull action movie.

Things that amused me (and notice how few of them there were, in a TWO AND A QUARTER HOUR MOVIE):

• The cop car pulls up by Shia LeBoeuf and the closeup on the door shows the motto: To Punish and Enslave. Whoops, it's a bad guy. Made me laugh.

• The mom trying to be cool talking about masturbating to her son.

• Shia LeBoeuf: I bought a car. Turned out to be an alien robot. (pause) Who knew?

• The gigantic burning robot on roller skates. I want to be that one.

In all? not one of the worst WORST WORST action movies ever...but it certainly breaks the first commandment of action movies: No Matter How Stupid Thou Art, Thou Shalt Not Be Boring.

Skip it. Even in Blu-Ray.

*And I mean no disrespect to Mr. Diesel, who has funded a project that I think is absolutely the kind of thing that rich actors should do with their money. But he sure is dumb lookin' in the face.