Theater Review: Transformers 3

I can hear the naysayers already. Why would you ever fork over the money to see this in the theaters?

Well, as much as I enjoy the Oscar-worthy films and the films with a lot of heart, story and dialogue, every once in a while I just love seeing a movie with amazing visual effects, fight scenes and stuff that blows up.

I know exactly what I am going to get with Transformers 3 and it honestly didn't disappoint me in that aspect.

A quick rundown of the film, it has been a few years since our last encounter and Sam (Shia LaBeouf) has graduated college and finds himself searching for a job. One of his complaints is he has saved the world twice and can't even land a job.

Gone is Sam's former girlfriend, Mikaela (Megan Fox). It isn't exactly stated why they broke up, but they take plenty of shots at her (no doubt because of her feud with Michael Bay). However, don't cry for Sam because he somehow manages to snag another hottie in Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) - even though I felt she wasn't the best choice she fit in pretty well.

The main story goes a little something like this, during the first moon landing the United States located a crash on the moon of an Autobot ship that apparently contained Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy) - on this ship are pillars that allow the transformers to open a portal and recreate their lost home of Cybertron.

Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and the other Autobots head to the moon to see if Sentinel Prime is still alive and still in possession of the pillars - and try to do so before they get into the wrong hands of Megatron (Hugo Weaving) and the other Decepticons.

That is pretty much the premise of the film and I have to admit it was much better than the second.

All of the major characters from the first two films return, including Lennox (Josh Duhamel), Simmons (John Turturro), Epps (Tyrese Gibs0n) and Sam's parents, Ron (Kevin Dunn) and Judy (Julie White).

New characters that played an important role were Dylan (Patrick Dempsey), Mearing (Frances McDormand), and Dutch (Alan Tudyk) - who in my opinion was hilarious. John Malkovich and Ken Jeong were also added, but in much smaller roles.

I felt the battle scenes in this film were far superior to any of the first two. The panned back a bit and allowed you to actually see the fights and who is actually fighting.

Overall, I got exactly what I was looking for - a great summer, popcorn flick. Plus, the story was a bit better than the second - which was a total bonus.

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