Although
he scrapped the original cast for a company of fresh faces, “Transformers”
director Michael Bay has changed little else in this sci-fi, fantasy franchise
about Hasbro’s enormous, shape-shifting, alien robots that exist to smash each
other to smithereens. Cast as an
entirely different character from Shia LaBeouf’s twentysomething Sam Witwicky,
Mark Wahlberg portrays a paranoid, single-parent father in the third sequel of
Paramount’s “Transformers” franchise.
Wahlberg isn’t the only newbie.
Five-time Emmy winner Kelsey Grammer of “Cheers” skulks around as a
sinister CIA spook, while chrome-domed Stanley Tucci behaves like a Victor
Frankenstein-style inventor in league with the notorious Grammer. For the record, I rank the original
“Transformers” marginally above “Dark of the Moon,” followed by “Age of
Extinction,” and then “Revenge of the Fallen.” “Reindeer Games” scenarist Ehren Kruger, who
penned the two previous “Transformers” tales, assigns everybody, Man and
Transformers alike, with more than enough onerous tasks in this fourth
installment to rival “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” with its colossal Windy
City apocalypse. Inevitably, everything culminates in a larger-than-life
smackdown between the Transformers with collateral damage galore. Furthermore, Bay and Kruger have anted up
some other surprises. Not only do the
Dinobots appear, but also mankind miraculously manages to manufacture
Transformers in their research laboratories.
Naturally, you’ll have to channel your inner adolescence to appreciate
the fanciful heroics and outlandish mayhem that this PG-13 blockbuster delivers
with predictable regularity throughout its bladder challenging 165
minutes. Whereas the previous
“Transformers” outings were essentially screwball comedies about titanic toys
using major cities as arenas for their pandemonium, “Transformers: Age of
Extinction” (*** OUT OF *****) doesn’t consciously strive to be as absurd as its
predecessors. The hare-brained antics of
Shia LaBeouf and his dysfunctional family were more amusing that anything
Wahlberg and his teen daughter with her rally race car driver boyfriend dream
up. Indeed, the quirkiest character in
“Age of Extinction” doesn’t survive the first hour. Meaning, “Age of Extinction” isn’t a Looney
Tunes extravaganza.
“Transformers:
Age of Extinction” takes place four years after the monumental battle of
Chicago in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”
Just as they suggested in the previous “Transformers” epic that NASA
embarked on lunar exploration simply as a ruse to locate a crashed Cybertronian
spacecraft on the moon before the Soviets, Bay and Kruger fantasize that the
dinosaurs disappeared as a consequence of aliens exterminating the massive
creatures with extreme prejudice. Bay
and Kruger waste no time introducing the Dinobots, and the scene in the Arctic
where mankind has discovered a Dinobot fossil is eerie. The next thing we know we’re in Texas. The new protagonist in “Age of Extinction” is
Cade Yeager. A crackpot inventor who
operates a fix-it service, Cade is a nice guy who wouldn’t swat a fly. Cade and his partner Lucas Flannery (T.J.
Miller of “Cloverfield”), a surfer dude out of water, are inspecting a movie
theater that the owner wants to renovate when they spot a big-rig truck covered
with debris. Cade buys the rig with
Lucas’ cash, and they haul it back to his barn.
Cade plans to strip it for spare parts.
Imagine Cade’s surprise when Optimus Prime (original “Transformers” voice-over
artist Peter Cullen) changes his shape.
Cade is floored. Not long afterward,
a Top Secret commando outfit nicknamed ‘Cemetery Wind,’ that tracks and
destroys Autobots and Decepticons alike, show up at his door. Since the devastating battle of Chicago, the
President has dismantled the combined Autobot & Pentagon operation to mop
up stray Decepticons. Furthermore, the
administration has placed a bounty on all Transformers good or evil. Lucas freaks out at Optimus Prime and alerts
Cemetery Wind. Sadly, Lucas is not
prepared for the Storm Trooper tactics of James Savoy (Titus of Welliver
“Mulholland Falls”) who resembles a shark in sunglasses and commands Cemetery
Wind. Savoy musters more villainy based
on his menacing facade and this propensity for violence than his scheming boss,
Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer), who belongs to the Central Intelligence
Agency. Attinger has recruited a
brilliant inventor, Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci 0f “The Hunger Games”); to
conduct experiments on Megatron’s severed head.
Attinger wants Joyce to create a man-made line of Transformers, and
Joyce possesses the genius to make it happen.
My
trifling objections with “Age of Extinction” lay with the new cast and the
change of atmosphere. Basically, I’ll
watch Mark Wahlberg in just about anything.
He makes consistently interesting movies. Moreover, Wahlberg radiates greater charisma
than Shia LaBeouf. Unfortunately,
Wahlberg plays a largely colorless character.
He worries constantly about his teenage daughter, Tessa Yeager (Nicola
Peltz), and struggles to keep her on a short leash. Naturally, Tessa hates his micro-managing
parental skills. Imagine Cade’s surprise
when he learns that Tessa has been dating an older fella! Jail bait-looking Nicola Peltz makes a poor
substitute for somebody as drop-dead sexy as Megan Fox. Mind you, Fox is no Meryl Streep, but she was
built for the “Transformers” franchise.
Tessa Yeager exists so Cade will fear for her welfare. She serves as the resident
damsel-in-distress. As Tessa’s reckless
boyfriend Shane, Jack Reynor brings little to the action aside from his driving
skills that a stunt double performed.
The stunts that Shane’s daredevil character pulls are impressive, but
little about Shane’s one-dimensional character is as impressive. Neither Kelsey Grammer’s rather ho-hum
villain nor Stanley Tucci’s deluded inventor overshadow the memory of the
insane shenanigans of John Turturro’s Agent Simmons in the first three
“Transformers.” Nobody takes over the
roles that Josh Duhamel as Captain Lennox and Tyrese Gibson as USAF Tech
Sergeant Epps created. Remember, the
military is excluded from “Age of Extinction.”
No,
you need not have seen the earlier “Transformers” trilogy toplining Shia
LaBeouf to appreciate this entertaining reboot.
The best “Transformers” movies boast a multiplicity of shape-shifting
robots, and the fourth “Transformers” movie meets the quota and then raises the
bar. Happily, quiet moments are few and
far between in “Age of Extinction,” and the battling robots make the third
sequel worthwhile escapism.
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