TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION: 2 STARS FOR NEWBIES, 4 STARS FOR FANS
The advertising tagline for “Transformers: Age of Extinction” is “This is not war, it's extinction,” which is catchy enough, I suppose, but having seen it I couldn’t help but think that “Cum on Feel the Noize,” a song lyric by either Slade or Quiet Riot, depending on your age, would have been more appropriate.
Michael Bay’s latest is eardrum shatteringly loud, guaranteed to leave you with ringing ears and a rumbling theatre seat. Visually, expect scorched eyes. Bay has made a movie for three of your five senses—only smell and taste are exempt—but will it entertain your brain while launching an all out assault on your senses?
Picking up four years after the invasion of Chicago seen in the last Transformers film, “Dark of the Moon,” the action begins when unemployed robotic engineer Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) uncover deactivated Autobot, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) hidden under a pile of junk. Their discovery puts them in the crosshairs of CIA agent Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) and tech tycoon Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci). The two are hatching a plan, fueled by equal parts paranoia and genius, to build man made second generation Transformers to seek out and destroy the Autobots. “A new era has begun,” says Attinger, “and the age of Transformers is over.”
Everybody loves spectacle. The Romans had the Coliseum and we have the “Transformers” movies. Like the gladiatorial shows of yore, in Michael Bay’s movies it doesn’t matter who lives or dies—the films don’t care about their human characters and neither do we—all that matters is the spectacle of the whole thing and at almost frenetic three hours “Age of Extinction” certainly delivers on that score. Like the old Roman emperors many moviegoers will give this movie a thumbs up simply because of the value per minute the film offers.
No one can accuse Bay of skimping on… well anything. “Age of Extinction” is a wide ranging action orgy that plays off of Bush era Homeland Security paranoia and also explains why dinosaurs became extinct. It comments on the ethics of unarmed warfare and blows up most of Hong Kong.
Bay doesn’t do anything by half measures but I found myself wishing the movie was about half as long as it is with half the bombast. It’s stylish—“Why run when you can run in slow motion,” Bay seems to be asking—not unlike a car commercial, but is excessive on almost every level. I don’t expect or want “My Dinner with Optimus Prime,” but in this case I think less would have been more.
Wahlberg brings loads of personality and humor with his over-protective father routine, Tucci is reliable as ever and Grammer is in full-on Dick Cheney mode but who cares? We’re not paying to see them, we’re paying to see Optimus Prime play bucking bronco with a giant dinobot.
Is “Transformers: Age of Extinction” a good movie? Not really. Does it deliver on its promise? Yes, but almost too much so.
THEY CAME TOGETHER: 3 STARS
"They Came Together," a new satire starring Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler, is the last romantic comedy you'll ever need to see. A pastiche of every rom com cliché, it’s a movie about sex and the city. Or maybe about what women want. Or perhaps it’s about friends with benefits. Actually, it’s about love, actually. Imagine one part "Airplane" and one part of every Kate Hudson romance and you get the idea.
Heading up a who’s who of a comedy cast, Rudd and Poehler play Joel and Molly, an unlikely couple who fall in love at first sight. He’s an executive at a candy company, she runs an independent confectionary shop called the Upper Sweet Side.
His company is trying to drive her store out of business so they can control NYC’s candy lucrative market, but despite their differences they find some common ground. "You like fiction books, too? No way!"
They also do all the things that people in rom coms do, but with a twist. In the standard “What am I going to wear montage” Molly ends up trying on a dozen outfits before deciding on a suit of armor. Joel sprints to declare his love for Molly only to wind up in a sword fight with her jealous ex-husband (an unexpected, but hilarious Michael Shannon). Meeting her parents takes a turn when they are revealed to be white supremacists there’s even the mandatory Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year's montage. The only thing missing is Julia Roberts’s trademark guffaw.
Bookending the whole thing is a dinner conversation where Joel and Molly describe how they met to friends Karen (Ellie Kemper) and Kyle (Bill Hader).
Poking fun at romantic comedies is easy but for the most part “They Came Together” does it well. It hits a bull’s eye time after time with the tropes plucked from rom coms but presented with a spin. For instance, Joel plays basketball with his pals, each of whom gives him romantic advice, but none have names, they are simply introduced by the rom com trope they represent.
When “They Came Together” riffs on the absurdities of the genre it works, but too often it winks at the camera and becomes a little too self aware. With their looks and chemistry, Rudd and Poehler are rom com ready, but occasionally their eagerness to sell the joke gets in the way of letting the laughs and the parody happen naturally.
Ultimately, for all its insight and style—pitch perfect rom com soft lighting and pop soundtrack—“They Came Together” is stretched a little thin at feature length. As a skit or a short film it might have been a cutting parody of an over-worked genre. At eighty-three minutes it is harder to love.
