Starring: Shia Labeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whitelay, John Turturro, John Malkovich, and Tyrese Gibson.

Directed by: Michael Bay

Today on this extremely hot day, I decided to go to the mall to check out, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” in 3D. I wasn’t going to see this one in theater, I was going to wait for DVD, but since this movie is getting great reviews, I decided to check it out anyway. I’m a huge Transformers fan. Loved the action figures and the cartoon series. It’s just that I felt that Michael Bay ruined the Transformers legacy by making crap movies. The first two Transformers movies weren’t that good at all, I didn’t like them.

On with my review…

Plot/synopsis: In 1961, The Ark, a Cybertronian spacecraft has been found on the Earth’s moon by Autobots. President John F. Kennedy orders NASA to go to the moon to investigate this spacecraft. In present time, Optimus Prime finds a comatose Sentinel Prime (voiced by Star Trek’s, Leonard Nimoy), and Optimus Prime goes back to Earth to help revive him. Optimus Prime tries to talk Sentinel in rejoining the Autobots but Sentinel refuses and betrays the Autobots, joining the Decepticons of the Cybertronian race. The Cybertronian race is where the Autobots vs. the Decepticons race to the moon to see who gets to discover the secrets of the Ark first.

Enough with the plot. On with my thoughts…

Since I didn’t like the first two “Transformers” films, I’ll have to be honest that I was very impressed with “Dark Of the Moon”. This is definitely a winner for Michael Bay. I guess he re-watched the first two films and thought to himself, “Geez, I better make the next Transformers movie a good one”. Well, he did exactly that. I absolutely loved, “Dark of the Moon”. It’s a major improvement from the first two movies, so congrats to Michael Bay on a job well done.

Why was it so good? Well, it’s less family friendly. The film was very dark and violent all the way through. The reason the first two “Transformers” films didn’t work because they were too family friendly comedy, that’s NOT Transformers. Plus, the second movie was just so bad and the material was so offensive and racist.

In “Dark of the Moon”, while I don’t like Shia Labeouf as an actor, he was actually enjoyable in this movie, plus he didn’t hog too much screen time like he did in the first two films. Other things I liked about the film, I loved Leonard Nimoy voicing the villain of Sentinel Prime, Leonard did a great job. I also thought the CGI and special effects were very visual and realistic. It wasn’t as cartoonish.

Plus, the whole movie is just a lot of fun overall. It was action packed, all the way through. The plot and the writing was decent as well. The plot for the third movie actually stayed true to the Transformers franchise. I also love how the movie is 2 and a half hours long. Michael Bay finally did his homework and made a Transformers movie the right way, the way it’s supposed to be.

I really loved it! Good job, Michael!

Score for “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” = **** (4 stars as in “excellent”)

Kev