Transfomers 3

I should start this by saying that I enjoyed the first Transformers, but I thought the second was a mess. It's even harder to sit through on a second viewing. So I came to Transformers 3 with my guard up, but cautiously optimistic that it might not suck. And it wasn't all bad. The action scenes were fun for the most part. The 3D looked awesome. It was up to Avatar standards. Seriously folks, if you're going to do 3D, shoot it in 3D. That post conversion stuff looks like crap. If I can say something good about Michael Bay it's that he knows visuals. Film making is a visual art, so he's got part of it down. And there were actually wide shots in this movie- sometimes I could totally tell what was going on. Does this mean Mr. Bay maturing as a director?
This movie is not great. While half of film making is visuals, the other half is story telling. That's something Bay doesn't seem to give a fuck about. My biggest complaint of this movie is that it is around 2 and a half hours. If you're going to keep me in a theater that long, you better have a story to back it up. And Bay doesn't. There are many story lines that are introduced but go nowhere. The pacing is choppy. In the end, it doesn't really matter- we're here to see giant robots beat the shit out of each other. But that's kind of the point. If that's why we're here, why do we need an hour on seeing Sam trying to find a job? We know he's going to end up right in the middle of the robot fight anyway. Get on with it! I could have probably cut this movie down by a half hour and not lost anything. Another minor detail that bothered me is that this time, the robots bled when hit. What? ROBOTS DON'T BLEED!! I mean come on. Also, I'm pretty sure I heard Shockwave referred to as Soundwave by someone. You'll remember that Soundwave was in the last one and died. I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder. *braces for wedgie* That may go to the fact that most of the transformers look similar, and it's hard to tell them apart. This movie has its fun spots, but its bogged down by long sections of pointlessness that don't amount to anything. At best, it's a fun escapist action movie. At worst, it's a 2 and a half hour poorly written toy commercial. I'm stuck somewhere in the middle.
Grade: 3 out of 5 stars