Donut Movie Review: 'Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon' (2011) (PG-13)

So, a lot of thoughts creep into my mind when I think about "Transformers 3". I could start my discussion about how annoyed I am that these past two Transformer movies, which would be so easy to make 5.0 donuts worth of entertainment, are barely four. But, I won't. I could start my discussion with about my annoyance on how they replaced one pointless hot female with another pointless, slightly less hot female. But, I won't. I could start my discussion with my annoyance of the annoying "comic relief" mini-transformers in the movie and how amazing that I actually am giving this movie bonus points because they were still infinitely less annoying than the "comic relief" transformers of the second movie, yet still had that disturbing resemblance to Jar Jar. But I won't. I could start my discussion with the incredible special effects, because they were remarkable once again. But, I won't. I could start my discussion with how they added a pointless hour to this movie trying to stick with the annoying formula of the second movie. But I won't. I could start my discussion weeping about how this movie is destroying the box office even though it only makes my "top five action movies of the summer so far" list if I don't include Super 8. But I won't. I could start my discussion with the awesomeness that they used Leonard Nimoy as the voice of one of the main transformers. But I won't. I could start my discussion about how annoying I find that this movie and the other two, spend more time focusing on the stupid humans, whether it is the unlikely hero (for a third fricking time) or the military personnel that are helping the good Transformers (Autobots), than, what everyone in the world came to the theater to see, the robots. But I won't.

Instead, I will start this review with a completely hypothetical story. Suppose -- someone you knew went to the movie theater to see this movie. Let us assume that at this point he has seen hundreds upon hundreds of movies in the theater. Let's pretend that his friend says, "I think the movie is in theater 4". This completely hypothetical person then looks in his Velcro Hawaii wallet given to him by his cousin in 1986 for the movie stub and declares that the movie is actually in theater 2. Arriving in theater 2 a little bit late, both hypothetical movie watchers are having a difficult time figuring out what is happening in the movie. While typically this would be cause for panic, this is a Michael Bay film after all, so they could have just missed three minutes of exposition thrown at the beginning to set the table of blowing things up the rest of the movie. And there certainly was a lot of blowing up going on in the movie. If the action was this intense at the beginning of the movie, one could only imagine how crazy the ending of the movie would be. Speaking of "the ending of the movie", there it is. Was this only supposed to be an hour long? Hypothetical person A then looks in his wallet again and discovers that the stub he looked at was from "Bad Teacher", a movie he had seen a couple weeks earlier (on a completely unrelated topic, be sure to check out my review of "Bad Teacher"). Hypothetical person A and his hypothetical friend are in disbelief. Person A wonders how he could have messed up with the stubs, or how he could have accidentally picked the only other theater in the building that was also playing the same movie in a non-3D format. Person B wonders the same. They both wonder how they did not realize they were watching the last hour of the movie. So does the person at guest services when a ticket exchange is attempted. She finally relents, so long as they pay the extra money for the 3D show that is about to start. Then they watch the movie again, but the enjoyment is diminished a bit as the ending of the movie is already known. Though the enjoyment is a little higher now that they have seen the beginning 1.5 hours of the movie. Hypothetical person A is SUCH AN IDIOT!!!!

Sigh. I have no idea how to fairly rate this movie. While I typically will stand firm on the position that the movie should be rated with how much you enjoy it, trying to figure out how much I enjoyed something that I've watched 1.5 times and with the last hour being watched first is difficult. Also, I feel a pressing need to up it .5 donuts due to, what I'll humbly call, the "embarrassment factor". I can only say that I am fairly certain that this was better than the second movie. I can say with 99.9% certainty that this was not as good as the first "Transformers" (live action) movie. I can say with ABSOLUTE certainty that you should watch the first half of the movie before the second half for maximum enjoyment.