All the technical promise of decades of “aliens invade” thrillers, from “Independence Day” through “Battle: Lost Angeles,” and the best comic character actors money can buy serve “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” well. The funniest, best-executed film in the talking, bleeding, Earth-protecting robots-that-look-like-cars-and-trucks series, “Moon” delivers the popcorn in gigantic fist-fulls of fun.
It’s as head-slappingly stupid as ever, a product placement action film with a Camaro as a hero and assorted other motoring makes as villains. But Michael Bay’s cartoon-come-to-life co-opts NASA history and re-decorates Chicago with a gusto as over-the-top as any Shia LaBeouf rant, rave or riff. Hey, what’s an actor to do when all the best lines go to digital robots?
“I just want to matter,” says young Sam (LaBeouf), a two-time planetary hero reduced to begging for work from the likes of John Malkovich. He needs a D.C. job because he has traded the bombshell girlfriend played by Megan Fox for a model (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) who wears short, tight clothes and only has one scene in which we note that she’s a model, not an actress.
The Autobots are ever vigilant, though there are those (Bill O’Reilly of Fox News among them) who want them exiled. And if you have any recollection of the old TV cartoon, you know that those darned Decepticons are never quite fully vanquished. This time, there’s a buried spaceship on the Moon, a half-century long NASA cover-up and the revival of an ancient leader, Sentinel Prime, disc0mfittingly voiced by the great Vulcan, Leonard Nimoy.
Hearing Mr. Spock repeat lines from “Star Trek” movies in robot form in this context is only the second most tone-deaf thing here. Having lunar explorer Buzz Aldrin on hand to legitimize the bogus NASA history is the first.
But as Sam hurtles from D.C. to the Kennedy Space Center to piece together this alternate history, he meets an array of great character players — from the returning John Turturro, as an ex-CIA conspiracy buff, to Frances McDormand, as a new intelligence chief. Yes, Malkovich steals his scenes. Unless he’s in them with the hilarious Ken Jeong of “The Hangover” movies. Read more....