More Than Meets The Eye? Barely.

I'm going to assume that with Transformers 2: Even More Robotic Action--not the real title--premiering tomorrow, it is fairly safe to write about Michael Bay's first movie without spoiling too much, but just in case, you have been warned.

Where did the impulse to watch the movie come from? Presumably from my childhood, when I was absolutely fascinated with the Transformers, and to a lesser extent, the cheap knock-offs known as the GoBots. Cars and trains getting into accidents? Uncool. Cars and trains transforming into giant robots with guns and blowing everything up? Cool.

Maybe it was Sutro Tower In San Francisco, which totally looks like it ought to be a Transformer.

Or maybe it was the summer blockbuster fever combined with the San Francisco atmosphere that makes watching movies a good thing to do on foggy, wet Sunday afternoons. Revenge of the Fallen trailers are everywhere, and I think I want to watch it, just because. It's one of those 'just because' movies, like X-Men Origins: Wolverine as opposed to Star Trek. But this is another instance like Harry Potter; if you want to watch or read a sequel, you have to read what came before--it's like the 11th Commandment, or something like that.

So I rented Transformers the other night to take advantage of a special promotion where we have a week of unlimited movie rentals for a relatively small price. For a movie like this, it is the perfect scenario.

It was definitely entertaining enough, with some hints of mythology and lots of special effects. Childhood toys brought to life and fighting each other and blowing things up. Would have been worth seeing in the theater. But there were problems, too, which I think, to the discerning eye, will establish why the movie didn't win an Oscar (as far as I know):

1) Where the hell was Megatron? When I was a kid, it was Optimus Prime versus Megatron. In this movie, Megatron spends the first 75% of the movie as a giant ice cube, only to come out in time for the big showdown, a 'machina ex machina' as it were; the story should have been about the Decepticons versus the Autobots, not a whiny teenager in love with Megan Fox. It's supposed to be fiction, after all;

2) Not enough screen time for Tom Lenk--Andrew from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. He was an analyst brought in by the military to figure out the source of a cyber attack. I was thrilled to see him for a few minutes, and then he disappeared. This was part of a larger problem, where there were simply way too many characters introduced and then left to dry like a towel on a clothesline, with no real depth--Lenk, Josh Duhamel, that one guy, Jon Voight, that girl analyst, Bernie Mac; it just got too distracting trying to keep up with them all.

A part of that might be my problem, because I kept getting distracted and looking away from time to time, so maybe I missed some character development, but I think that my distraction, like a backhanded compliment, would be a backhanded excuse for this character clutter;

which leads us to 3) it was way too hard to tell which Transformer was doing what to whom and when during the battle scenes. Totally lost track of them, and it wasn't until I read the Wikipedia article later that I realized that Starscream got away. Sequel, anyone?

The Transformers never really came to life, not much. Their personalities seemed like cliched action one-liners grafted on to hunks of metal and guns.

Maybe, though, I'm just being bitter because it was live-action, not the cartoon that I remember from when I was five or six. Maybe I should have rented the cartoon movie too.

Maybe I'll rent that one tomorrow, because the Transformers ARE a lot of fun.

Cinematic Sojourns, Movie Nights

I. SATURDAY NIGHT

Vaughn and Tara came over to Marina's place, and we made tacos, offering turkey-chicken organic sausage, ground beef for the heathens, i.e. not me, salsa, pupusas, shredded cheese, torn up blue corn tortillas by way of homemade chips, and to drink, Negro Modelos in their small bottles with the gold foil.

It was movie night in Bernal.

We were determined to find a good comedy that everyone would like. Marina and I were especially eager to pawn the decision off on Vaughn and Tara after the Night of In Bruges, which was good and had funny moments, but yeah, a dead dwarf and people falling from the sky and blood and violence didn't exactly promote a sense of lightness and comic jubilation

They brought with them a list of potential films, some obviously picked by Tara, some obviously picked by Vaughn, and a few good compromises. After some indecision, Marina and Tara threatened us with Bride Wars, and Vaughn and I, calling on some genetic survival instinct that allowed humanity to survive until we could build tools, instantly voted for Pineapple Express.*

*For clear disclosure, I watched and enjoyed He's Just Not That Into You. Also Sex And The City.

(WARNING: Spoilers of Pineapple Express, I Love You, Man, and possibly Tropic Thunder.)

Pineapple Express has a polished comic pedigree, kind of like the potential offspring of Tina Fey and Joss Whedon: Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, James Franco, the ghastly boss from Office Space, and the absurdity that is pot. Everything I've heard of the movie has been positive, and indeed the movie starts out with a very solid, entertaining comic dynamic with just the right mix of slapstick, marijuana wackiness, and genuine quirky character development that promises a good story, even paired with a sudden murder, which is like pairing a red wine with a dinner of sauerkraut.

Then we get maybe three-quarters of the way into the movie, and fall into a Burmese Tiger Pit of a 'What the hell just happened?' moment.

Maybe it intends it as a satire, but the movie is suddenly a quagmire of bizarre and semi-comic utter violence, choosing as a method of resolving the plot lines a strategy along the lines of that which Jehovah took with respect to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Maybe, as Vaughn said, they could have edited the scenes down to about twenty minutes and retained the flavor they had established, but for me, the entire film breaks down and loses its character in mania. Which is too bad, because the first part of the movie was quite good.

Vaughn thinks it is a hard thing for a comedy to remain true to itself, and I agree. Look at Tropic Thunder: it starts out with a pretty funny satirical edge, but then literally triggers another one of those 'what the hell' moments. You know it is not quite hitting the right tone for you when you find yourself thinking, 'Oh, god, they're still going on about this, huh?"

A notable exception I've seen recently is I Love You, Man, starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. The comedy in this movie is very human, and retains the small, subtle, very personal focus, despite the occasional rough spot, notably the slightly overwrought reconciliation scene at the end. Paul Rudd exquisitely plays on those feelings of awkwardness we get both when we are less than socially adept ourselves and when we are around others who a bit socially clumsy themselves.

Pineapple Express triggered a bit of that sense of awkwardness too, mainly because the movie itself became a little clumsy at the end. The silver lining to that, of course, was that we could go from laughing from mirth to laughing from disbelief over how bad it became so quickly.

It helped to have three flavors of ice cream to mix and match. We were quite hungry.

Coming up in Part II, a journey to the Canadian Rockies, for lots of boyness, i.e., bullets, swords, Hugh Jackman, and a whole lot of special effects.

II. SUNDAY AFTERNOON

WARNING: WOLVERINE SPOILAGE AHEAD, a warning previously only seen in Wisconsin or Michigan, I believe.

In the wake of the Pineapple Express derailment, it might have been supposed that something light and fluffy would be in order for the following day, but proving that she is ultimately the best of all possible best sports, Marina agreed to--even suggested--a Sunday afternoon screening of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the excessively punctuated comic book flick featuring Hugh Jackman in his most action-packed role since the Oscars.

We had read reviews that criticized Wolverine as a movie.

But the thing is, it isn't trying to be a movie qua art qua cinema. It's trying to be a fun story, a summer blockbuster, a comic book movie, and it is true to itself, which I think says a lot. The movie is not trying to establish its credentials as the next Citizen Kane; it's trying to make a lot of money.

The movie is pretty spectacular in the literal sense; lots of mutant powers, pure coolness of innovation in the arts of hitting, kicking, throwing, shooting, exploding things, etc.

"Yes," I told, Marina. "I am a boy. And yes, I do like this stuff."

It was a boy afternoon, after all, right down to the wandering around Anthropologie in Marina's wake while she shopped for a friend's birthday gift, wearing the same air of patience as the other men wandering or sitting down like strangers in a fragile strange land where they weren't sure they should be.

It was a rainy day in a rainy weekend, the pavement washed clean of dirt, the air washed clean of pollen, and the towers of the shopping heart of San Francisco seemed to hum with energy, although that might have just been a humid combination of perfume and wet people in Sephora. In other words, it was a great day for a movie, because you could sit in a dark theater in the middle of the day, guilt-free.

And in terms of an origin story, Wolverine was very successful. There were a few moments that felt a bit odd, like Patrick Stewart's cameo which was filmed with an Audrey Hepburn-esque soft focus that I thought was a bit much. Overall, though, it struck a good balance of action and foreshadowing what would happen in the previous movies. I'm not an expert in the canon of Wolverine and the X-Men, but as someone who enjoyed the original three X-Men movies, I found this incarnation to be quite satisfying.


And isn't that all one needs ask of a movie?