Kuantan, June 28:

My friends and I went to watch the Transformers. I've watched the Transformer cartoon as a kid, but unfortunately, due to some serious brain injury,

my poor skull...

I don't remember much of it. And being out of contact with things related to Transformers many years, it became nothing more than a shadow of my innocent, happy childhood.

It's entertaining alright. Oozing with metallic mecha-coolness, this movie boasts of fast-paced, explosive action featuring the ultimate showdown between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Watching them pounding and blowing each other up into scrap metals is an exhilarating experience, with all those explosions and the robots' unbelievably agile moves, not to forget car-chase scenes. The CGI animation is brilliant - all the robots are designed to the tiniest details and their transformation is pretty cool.

Besides that, it features an attractive and youthful cast. With her tight abs, curvacious body, and angellic face, I bet Megan Fox (as Mikaela) got a lot of guys (and lesbos) drooling over her - and I'm a hot-blooded, healthy youth. The few scenes where she shows some skin were really... ahem, pleasing to the eye.

And the hot Australian hacker played by Rachael Taylor is not bad either. Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky is alright, energetic and lively as he is, and a bit on the cute side.

Yhis movie is filled with cheesy jokes and witty remarks, which, while not making the movie smart, manages to amuse.

Top notch animations, youthful lead characters, romance plot, funny scenes... Seems perfect.

Unfortunately, no. The plot is far from convincing, and the character development is practically non-existent. In this movie, the transformers are just impressive transforming robots without distinguished personality. Well, that's robots for you, I guess. And the romance plot is obviously just for the sake of being there. The lead characters jump from barely knowing each other to becoming lovers. And the scene when Sam was looking for his ancestor's glasses in his house: Although it's amusing, it's needlessly long and clogs up screentime which would have been better to flesh out the characters.

All in all, this movie is superficially entertaining. Well, just like many of the modern things, this movie is wrapped with an attractive package - pleasing the visual and auditory senses - but neglects the content. While it thrills the audience with the animations and explosions, it fails to contribute to his thoughts or rouse his deeper emotions of pity, anger, and sadness.

More than meets the eye? I'm afraid not.