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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

"Transformers: Dark of the Moon": An American summer-movie masterwork

"Transformers: Dark of the Moon": An American summer-movie masterwork: "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" is too much in every direction -- too much action, too much plot, too much noise, too much destruction -- which is exactly what makes it the Wagnerian fulfillment of the American summer-movie tradition. It's a great and terrible film, in identical proportions and in all possible meanings of those words. It's got battling giant robots and hidden secrets of the American and Soviet space programs and feeble domestic comedy and random scenery-chewing shtick from an A-list supporting cast and an extreme close-up of a hot chick's bikini-clad bottom as she climbs the stairs. In 3-D! It's so massively and excessively vulgar that it doesn't just flirt with self-parody, but chews it up and spits it out, and I'm not even sure that's unintentional. In food terms, "Dark of the Moon" is like going to TGI Friday's and ordering everything on the menu and then going to Krispy Kreme and doing it again. It's not worth doing, it'll definitely make you sick and a lot of it will taste bad, but as a performance-art act of juvenile Id-fulfillment, it's magnificent.