I have nothing to say about Transformers: Aged of other than the obvious. That is until I transcribed my notes, which, when read as highlights, somehow make it seem less than the suffocating in extremely loud freezing tar it really was. Or, as past Scott said: ’45 minutes to go???? I didn’t know my life was this long’. So, once again, for those who aren’t going to bother, i.e. everyone, and before we move to the experience, let’s attempt to capture the film…

…which is fairly dull, naturally, filled with people doing nothing as the camera looks at them from a nine foot hole in the ground while being flared by all three of our suns. It’s somehow less boring than the other ones because it does reach the camp tipping point. This tipping point reaching is way later than Godzilla, about two hours in, when they drive from Beijing to Hong Kong (yes, that’s right), then switch from car to motorcycle all because one roof in Hong Kong is apparently the only place in the world that helicopters can land. Then the helicopter doesn’t land.

I think they had to go to the roof so Mr. Wahlberg could take a very half-hearted sip of Shiuhua Milk, which I know because I said to myself, ‘Damn, I wish I had written that down because no one will believe that we’ve reached the point in foreign market pandering that we’re finally doing, oh, they’re showing it again. Okay. Let me get this. ‘Shiu…hua…Milk. Got it. Thanks.’ When you just show a character next to a billboard for two seconds (It’s a Michael Bay film. That’s like two minutes Super Bowl ad time), you have reached the point when we say: ‘Wow. Even the product placement is lazy.’

This is followed by an exponentially increasing rhythm of rock anthems, close up of lover’s hands that not only don’t die, but aren’t in any danger, an extremely weird moment when an incidental character tells the reformed corporate honcho: ‘I’m proud of you’, ending an arc that no one bothered to tell the audience about, and a magnet that sucks up every piece of metal except for the giant metal bomb that it was designed to find. And then, after explosions have exploded, and the shots of people looking have been dollied, after all that, Optimus Prime, using a power that would have been helpful in any of the other films, including this one, but is saved for the end when it does absolutely nothing for the story, flies off the planet with his rocket shoes.

You know, to kill God.

Makes you want to see it. Don’t. There’s a lot to wade through until you get to the silliness. The rest of the experience was akin to being a five year old stuck watching a Transformers movie.

(ahem)

Because this is the reason I wasn’t going to say anything about the film itself. It was the experience that I wished so much to recount, the experience of seeing it at the Cineworld Brighton Sunday at 11:00. Now I get that PG-13 (12A here) means that, technically, you can bring children of any age to the film. And, so I saw Transformers: Aged in a theater packed with kids, nary one over five, and many quite younger.

Is this, finally, the film for no one?

Now nobody hates kids more than I do…except, it appears, for parents. How else to explain subjecting one’s three year old (not the youngest) to an extremely violent, yet utterly nonsensical, 167 minutes? It’s true that I ran out of Poseidon Adventure when I was eight, which, let’s face it, is not that scary, and this all could thus be an old-timer’s aesthetic of those kids today with their internet and 8-tracks (it’s a revival, pops, you wouldn’t understand!), but I can report that even in our modern age, when you show the only sympathetic character (Mr. T.J. Miller, who apparently can be funny in anything) being burned alive, followed by not one, not two, not four (hey, if you’re going to use hyperbolic language, you have to give equal time) but three close ups of his roasted flesh, those kids were crying like they had just seen a ship turned upside down in 1974.

In a way, I suppose the tykes had a more intense experience than the adults, being that they were bored out of their minds and running around like mad for the majority, and screaming in utter fear and horror at Frasier getting his chest blown apart by a mortar shell (though only one close up of that), so they’ll certainly remember it more than I will. On their therapist’s couch’s after regressive hypnosis, but still.

I can gratefully say that the running around provided some much thanked distraction from the time event horizon first two hours, but, said I silently, you live in Brighton. Yes, you all lament and see Michael Bay, but you live in Brighton. You could just go to the beach.

What Emily thinks I’m doing when I see movies. What I should be doing when I see movies.

What kind of idiot wouldn’t just go the beach?