Transformers : Dark Of The Moon

Rating:**

The bots are back. How’s that for an opening line? Same old,huh? That’s what I felt like when I sat through Transformers : Dark Of The Moon ,the third part of the franchise in which the following things happen: the good Autobots and the bad Decepticons slug it out,and Sam Witwicky sets out to the save the planet,armed with a leggy girlfriend sporting a tight white sheath and an industrial-strength pout. All of which have been the chief features of the previous couple of movies. So how does Michael Bay justify making a third? Why,by making the film a little dense as to plot,and giving it perhaps the longest climax ever in Hollywood history,stuffing it with clanking robots of all shapes and sizes,all of which should go on to create more fanboys while keeping the present lot happy.

So Witwicky (LeBeouf) who’s already had two previous stabs at rescuing the world from the evil bots,fetches up as a delivery boy in a mail room in the new film. Yes,he’s done with college,and that’s the only job an Ivy Leaguer can get in a post-recession America,even if he can snaffle a girl-friend who’s so manifestly high maintenance that only a rich guy (Dempsey) with a taste for expensive automobiles seems like a better match for her. A snappish FBI officer (McDormand) comes on to growl; and an Asian American conspiracy theorist (Jeong) provides some humour before being dispatched : take that,slant eye,we’ve got to get you into our all-American movies because we are vociferous equal opportunists,but who said you get to stay right till the end?

Bay has been beaten so much with a no-plot stick that he gives us a revisionist history lesson here,just like the ‘Watchmen’ did a while back,and the ‘X Men’ did a couple of weeks ago : clearly,movies made primarily with CGI are allowed to play around with past events. See,the first American expedition to the moon was put into motion only because some people knew that an alien spaceship,with gigantic,shape-shifting robots and pillars with special powers,had crash-landed there. See,there was another,much more sinister,till now unknown aspect,to the Chernobyl nuclear leak disaster.

And yes,former American presidents are morphed to help things along. And it all leads to an endgame which goes on and on and on,even longer and duller than the one we got in our own ‘Robot’,which is my benchmark for the longest-ever-climax-featuring-a-special-effects-snake. And though I can’t abide the dimness that 3D bestows upon everything it touches,Bay manages to keep his scenes fairly bright : I know because I kept sneakily taking off those glasses to check out just how the movie is faring in ordinary old 2 D. And I’m happy to report that the blur is minimal,so go ahead,fling those shades off whenever it gets too much,and think of where this would go when every one returns for a fourth time. .

Meanwhile,LeBeouf and his new girlfriend Carly (Megan Fox has been famously fired) try to keep the human flag flying as the bots occupy centre stage,and the good overcomes the bad. Again.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com