Transformers

I finally watched "Transformers", directed by Michael Bay. It is the type of movie that if I don't write about it now, I never will because I already forgot half of it and I just finished it five minutes ago.

Crap. I just spent five minutes after writing the above sentences trying to remember what snide comments I was about to make, and all that's left in my head is "Poosh". If you don't know, poosh is the culminate sound of two hours of car crashes, explosions, missile fire, and blown-up buildings all compressed into one second. Michael Bay made my brain go poosh.

The experience was exactly like watching "Memento", where time was sliced into a dozen pieces and the fragments rearranged out of order, casting doubt on the existence of narrative yet cohesive enough to motivate one to search for it.

Actually, the experience was nothing like watching "Memento." This is a better analogy. My brain felt like an asteroid hitting another asteroid, which then hit a third asteroid, and then somehow the asteroids rearrange their flight paths so they all start spinning in unison and plummet together towards Earth.

That is also the beginning sequence of Transformers, except there is also a melodramatic voice-over about how Earth is in danger from the Decepticons who want the All Spice so they can season Earth with their evil and then, I dunno, buy a time share and summer in Maine.

I was 100% prepared for a fun but brainless movie when I rented Transformers. Where I erred was not checking the running time beforehand. I saw the Netflix sleeve and thought, "Crap, two and a half hours? That's a long time for a bad movie."

When you are watching a movie that turns time into an abyss with no ledges to anchor oneself, 1 hour and 22 minutes is the same as 2.5 hours. except the latter fosters more pee breaks and thoughts like, "Why is the robot talking like Martin Lawrence from 'Bad Boys II'?"

Ooh, I remembered a thought! Michael Bay passed up an amazing opportunity for a joke. This opportunity was so amazing, that in spite of what I wrote, I would have become a Michael Bay fan for life if he had made this joke.

It was the scene where High School Guy Who Looks 25 and High School Girl Who Already Had Plastic Surgery were meeting the Autobots for the first time.

High School Guy asked Optimus Prime how the Autobots know slang. (Let's ignore the ridiculousness of this question, or why his first question wasn't "HOW THE FUCK DID YOU CRAZY TALKING ROBOTS GET HERE?") Optimus Prime said, "We learned it from the Internet."

What a great set-up for a joke. You can draw from one of many areas of Internet linguistic oddness: l33t speak, IM chat, penis enhancement spam, and so on. What does one of the Autobots say to show off his Internet language?

"This looks like a cool place to kick it!" Wow. Move more, Mr. T. "Jazz" of the Autobots is here.

Here's what would have made me a Michael Bay fan for life:

GUY: "Where did you learn English?"
OPTIMUS PRIME: "The World Wide Web."
JAZZ: "I CAN haz cheezburger." (1 2 3)