Transformers: Dark of the Moon

MOVIE REVIEW

Putting the ‘more’ in ‘more than meets the eye’

June 29, 2011|By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON Directed by: Michael Bay

Written by: Ehren Kruger

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Patrick Dempsey, Josh Duhamel, and John Turturro

At: Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs

Running time: 151 minutes

Rated: PG-13 (intense prolonged sequences of sci-fi action violence, mayhem and destruction, and for language, some sexuality and innuendo)

Has there been a more categorically slutty movie than Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Dark of the Moon’’? In the opening 75 of its 151 minutes, this happens: Apollo 11, Walter Cronkite, Neil Armstrong, Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Obama, Buzz Aldrin (in the flesh), the Middle East, Chernobyl, African Savanna, Shia LaBeouf, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Patrick Dempsey, Autobots, Decepticons, Bill O’Reilly, John Turturro, Hermes Birkin bags, the Department of Health and Human Services, and something called the Ark. The only restraint Bay exercises is not playing “We Didn’t Start the Fire’’ — and that’s only because, for him, it’d be untrue. He more than starts a fire. He concocts a climactic war that flattens downtown Chicago. Bay is such a little boy’s director. You know he picked that city because it’s the one with the best rock-’em-sock-’em street names. Wacker! Wabash!

In this new Transformers installment — we’re calling it “Toy Story 3’’ at my house — Bay takes “all over the map’’ to new extremes. Apparently Armstrong returned to Earth with a trinket crucial to the evil Decepticons’ master plan. (Says Neil: “My God, it’s some sort of giant metal face!’’) That moon-landing sequence is chased with a shot of a nearly nude derriere ascending a staircase (two moons). It belongs to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a blonde English fashion model who holds her close-ups the way some coeds hold their beer: She looks seasick. Which explains why her hair is often swept to one side. It’s in case she needs help in the ladies room. Bay’s a good girlfriend that way — one whose preference to clothe Huntington-Whiteley in minidresses and scoop-necks signifies a good girlfriend with ulterior motives. She’s a replacement for Megan Fox, who is Judi Dench by comparison.

The last half hinges on her rescue from an diabolically coiffed race-car obsessive (Dempsey), and, again, it’s the sort of cheesy heroism that only a man with an adolescent’s libido would risk his life to perform. Not to mention the lives of the troops backing him.