I must confess that when I first heard about the proposed live-action movie version of Transformers, I scoffed at the idea. Being a hard-core fan of the animated series as a child (and even now), I grimaced at the thought of a live-action movie that I was almost certain would tarnish my beloved cartoon's image. Having witnessed several uninspired incarnations and variations of the original (G1) Transformers series over the years, as well as several loony live action adaptations of several different classic cartoon series, I figured that the Transformers movie would ultimately bear little resemblance to the beloved original animated series. Well, I'm man enough to admit when I've made a mistake and I clearly made a mistake by pre-judging this movie badly. My first inkling that things might not be quite so bad was when I heard the news that Bay planned on not only casting Peter Cullen, who voiced Optimus Prime in the original animated series, as Optimus Prime in the live-action movie, but that his character would also be given a similar physical appearance in the movie, Similarly, the reviews for the movie when it was released turned out to be unexpectedly rather positive leading me to decide to "blind-buy" the movie when it was released on DVD. The wife and I and the kids sat down and watched it together and I found that it was much better than I had expected it to be.

While I can't say that it was a particularly "brilliant" movie in terms of acting and dialogue nor anywhere near as good as the animated movie that was released in 1986, the action and special effects were definitely top-notch and there were some quite amusing scenes as well (I loved the scenes with the exasperated operator that the troops were talking to while they were trying to get a message back through to the US government about the Decepticon attack and when Bumblebee hosed down John Turturro's character with oil and Prime admonished him to "stop lubricating him"). Knowing that this is a Michael Bay film and that is likely to be more about action and explosions rather than acting or dialogue, you will need to adjust your expectations accordingly. I myself did not exactly decide to watch it because I expected "avant-garde" performances and "Shakespearean theater". Although I don't really hold it against it, The movie really felt more like an extended "prologue" meant as an introduction to a series rather than a standalone movie mostly because it was rather slow in introducing all of the principal characters and really (re-) starting the "war" between the Autobots and Decepticons. The impressive battle at the end of the movie didn't seem to last long enough and I thought that Megatron ended up getting killed off way too quickly (although, thankfully it was NOT Prime and I fully expect Megatron to return in one form or another in any future installments). Also, most of the characters didn't really get fleshed out or given as much screen time as Sam, Optimus Prime, and Bumblebee (sort of-because he didn't really speak in the movie) were, although I would expect that to change a bit in future installments.

Unlike the animated movie, the instrumental score composed by Steven Jablonsky paired with a few alternative rock songs (and one classic 80's tune) is decent but nowhere nearly as impressive as the score that Vince DiCola composed for the original animated movie alongside some 80's rock metal gems like "The Touch" ,"Dare", "Instruments of Destruction," etc.

Overall, however, Transformers (2007) was an entertaining and an enjoyable movie ("Transformers" is still "Transformers" to a die-hard fan like me) and I look forward to future installments of this series on the big screen. I would definitely recommend the movie for a rental at the very least but I also believe that it would probably be worth owning if you can find it on DVD (or Blu-Ray if available) for a reasonable price.