I wish we could have put Matt’s full review on the menu holders this week, but it just wouldn’t fit. It’s so great though, I just had to put the whole thing here. Enjoy…

TRANSFORMERS (PG-13; 144 min.)

“Ok, that one part where they’re fighting on the highway and the one Transformer is on the skates and just before he takes out that bus you see his reflection in the bus and you just think… they’re not even computer-animated. THEY’RE REAL ROBOTS.”
– a unidentified young man residing in Witmer Hall.

That quote is the kind of quote that you should take seriously in regards to Transformers: The Movie. The best reviews for Transformers don’t come from the Rolling Stone’s and The New York Times’s with their well-structured paragraphs, participles, and 5 dollar words like “paradigm shift”. Look to the media snobs when you want to know what film best encapsulates America’s turmoil with the Middle East or historical war drama serving as a metaphor for America’s turmoil with the Middle East. For Transformers, you ask the guy pumping your gas, you ask the brother-in-law who flunked out of tech-school, you ask the little sister who has no less than 900,000 Myspace friends. They’ll give you the facts. The best reviews for Transformers come in run-on sentences – the kind with adjectives that begat adjectives that begat superlative adjectives. That’s because this movie is the cinematic equivalent of the best run-on sentence you’ve NEVER read.

Transformers defines all that is America. In one fell, two-and-a-half hour swoop you will get equal shares of action, drama, romance, and product placement. Imagine the old tall tales prospectors used to tell of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill but with corporate sponsors. This is a movie that knows exactly what it is, and never pretends to be anything more. Yes, the robots do throw tanks around like toys. Yes, the tanks then become bigger, sassier robots and throw the fore-mentioned robots around like toys. Yes, Shia Lebeouf will sauté you with charm. Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus, and his name is Michael Bay. Legend has it that Transformers’ director Michael Bay is actually a 200 year-old Uncle Sam who cheated death by making a deal with the devil (Jerry Bruckheimer) who replaced his heart with a case of Rockstar Energy Drink and enslaved him to making over-the-top action movies with pro-American themes in exchange for immortality. The more popular belief is that Uncle Sam was never a real person, and Michael Bay is really just this big jerk who worked his way up from Got Milk? and Levis commercials to become really good at blowing things up.

If you think my use of sarcasm and hyperbole are in some way trying to deter you from seeing this movie, I will hurt you. Transformers made me feel like I was 8 years old again which is a feeling I have not known since I was 10 years old. Each of the 150 times those cars, trucks, and other vehicles went anthropomorphic and stood in the harsh sunlight – I felt sparks inside my heart and my brain which had not yet been awakened. I think maybe I was going through my own transformation… to manhood. This homecoming weekend – it’s not an option of you seeing Transformers – it’s how many times you’re seeing it, and this is after you buy it on Tuesday and watch it a dozen times before it’s screened in Parmer. I don’t know if Transformers is a particularly great movie, but it makes me feel closer to God.

So now that I’ve given my own run-on sentence, I will leave you with a haiku that came to me in a dream.

More than meets the eyes
Michael Bay raises his fists
Robots in disguise