The Transmorphers (2007, DVD)

The previews are far better than the movie. Forty-five minutes of character development (useless) that has little to do with the plot. The CGI effects are are lame and very dark. Save your money.

This is the worst movie ever made,and i thought the movies on Sci-fi channel were bad.I'll never buy anything by Asylum Entertainment.Oh and RECON sucked too.

I saw the trailer for this movie and it looked like good, cheesy fun. I'm a fan of low-budget schlock. I really wanted to like this movie. I really did.

And by all rights, I should have. It has everything: Giant killer robots, the remnants of humanity struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and sexy lesbians. It sounds like the perfect Saturday night, Pizza-Eating-Beer-Drinking, testosterone driven funfest. It was not.

I don't mind lousy special effects, or even C- or D-list acting if the concept is cool enough. Unfortunately, the acting in this movie (other than the male lead and his crusty sidekick, who I enjoyed and wished they'd appeared in a better movie) is strictly Z-list. I witnessed better performances in my sixth grade class's production of 'A Comedy of Errors'. Literally. It reminded me of the Mad TV sketch 'Glamazon Huntresses'...but not in a good way. I couldn't even enjoy it on the basest of levels; as an object of gleeful mockery. These performances are just torturous to watch.

I couldn't enjoy it for the battle scenes either. Giant Robot movies should have awesome battle scenes, with lots of stuff blowing up,people running around on fire, and so forth. Nope, not here. Instead you get CGI robots that look, graphically, like they were lifted from an old N64 game, getting blown up by...laser frisbees. No, I'm not making that up. I wish I were. The robots crush humanity and force the remnants underground to live like animals for a century or so, presumably because the initial invasion force was lucky enough not to stumble upon any frat boys playing Ultimate Frisbee out on the quad.

You'll get no spectacular gunfights from this film either. They have firearms, sure. Some sort of laser rifles. However, actually *showing* the laser beams emerge from the rifle barrels costs money. You have to CGI that in, folks, and apparently its not cheap. So, the gun battles consist of tight shots of the humans firing, with the barrel out of frame. Instead of watching them unload on the 64-bit bots while bellowing heroically like Vasquez in Aliens, you're treated to a close shot of the actors while they attempt to grunt and grimace dramatically while jerking their bodies like seizure victims in a ridiculously poor attempt to mimic the weapon's recoil.

I don't approach watching a movie like this with any high expectations for the script, either. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised by a low-budget film, discovering a great story under the poor acting and bargain basement special effects. Not this time. Not even close. The plot lurches around like a blind toddler. (perhaps the same blind toddler that wrote and directed). The major plot twist is completely ridiculous, and caused me to swear and throw my remote at the TV.

Overall, I give it -4000 Stars. My initial instinct (while picking shards of remote-plastic from the soles of my feet) was -5000, but I did sort of like the male lead and his sidekick and it did have giant robots and lesbians. All that had to be worth *something*, I guess.

I'm just glad I got this movie used on Ebay, for around five dollars including shipping. I can lose five bucks, no problem. Just wish I could get the time, and the lost SAN points back.