by Pontimax 01 » Thu Feb 21, 2008 2:33 am
I'm suprised at all the positive replies.
My personal view is that it was bad. Not worth a series. Decent experiment, testing of the waters to see if there was a market, maybe. It just lacked a lot of dynamic feel and energy. The acting wasn't good, the plot wasn't especially exciting, new, or even that interesting. I didn't care about the two leads, they were often dull and lacked chemistry. Val Kilmer, as KITT, seemed bored and uncaring, especially considering the shoes he should have known he was filling. The Hoff himself seemed spent and rigid, maybe fresh out of rehab has subdued him. His cameo wasn't worth the suspense of knowing he was going to be in it eventually. What would have made it absolutely memorable though is if he'd have given his lines, walked off screen, and then a few seconds later you see a black Trans Am driving away in the background. That.. would have been worth it, even if it was pure camp. While reading someone's opinion of the lesbian scene with the FBI agent, they mentioned it was offensive to family tv. While not at all offensive to me personally, I did have to agree with the person's wtf moment. It added nothing to the movie, and it seemed like it was only in there for a shock/hip factor. The action scenes were few and often just outlandish. The bad guys didn't seem to represent much of a dynamic threat. You couldn't look at them and say "oh yeah, they're baaad people, go good guys". You could only look at them and think "well, the movie said they're the bad guys, so eh, okaaay..".
Some things were just outright stupid, like the Ford Edge chasing KITT around the curvey roads, KITT displaying 105mph, and yet the Edge CUV is hanging right on his ass. You're telling me that a super advanced car with arguably one of the best AI's in existance couldn't shake loose what is in all practical purposes a vehicle with more driving dynamics in common with a minivan? Or the end of the final chase, with the GMC Yukon slamming into KITT at high speed and KITT not moving. I'm not debating the lack of damage, we know he's got advanced systems that we don't understand and such, but that doesn't seem like it'd conquer physics. If they hit KITT, destroyed the Yukon, and still managed to push KITT sideways, it'd have been a whole lot less hokey. (These two popular examples are creating a lot of negative comments on car forums everywhere right now.)
I want to say so bad that I won't get into the heavy Ford commercialism of it, but I can't. I expected it in all seriousness. Huge product placement, and I'm not talking about KITT. Well, maybe I could say that about his ability to change into regular Mustangs. That's touchy though, with Transformers featuring mainly GM vehicles. I will say though that most of the Ford commercials that sandwiched the movie were actually significantly more entertaining.
There's other things as well, but we get the idea. But I'll be fair, and say a few good things that salvaged some of the efforts. The CGI for the bullet impacts was nice for a low budget tv movie. The attack mode, while I didn't feel it was ever attacking anything, was okay. Even the transforming effort, above comments aside, worked well enough as a plot device.
All in all, 4 out of 10. Which I think is more fair than many reviews I've seen online.
Those were the only two things that bothered me. I hope if they do make a series they would keep in mind that there are children watching.
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
