Transmorphers (2007)

TRANSMORPHERS is a shamefully bad knock-off movie made by The Asylum to cash in on the Hollywood blockbuster TRANSFORMERS. It exists solely to be put on video shelves where it can fool viewers into purchasing it by mistake, expecting the Michael Bay movie. This film was made for a pittance and features a handful of actors sharing dialogue in the gloom in front of a green screen. The whole thing looks cheap and nasty and is coloured a navy blue. Occasionally there's a bit of bad CGI in the form of a rampaging giant robot. There are no actors of note here and no discernable talent either; just mindlessness.

"Transmorphers" is the worst movie I have reviewed for Direct To Video Month and I have to apologize to "Leprechaun: Back 2 Da Hood". Apart from the fact that the title would make you think it was a ripoff of "Transformers" when it mostly isn't, the special effects are terrible. They might be even worse than in "George Of The Jungle 2". I'm surprised this isn't in the IMDb Bottom 100. Do they not allow direct to video films to be featured there? They probably should. This is mostly a ripoff of "The Terminator" which some of "The Matrix" thrown in.Most of this movie is painfully boring as it's nothing but people talking. I don't care in the least about any of these unbearably dull characters. They have no personality other than being annoying. Everyone in this movie is annoying. The film's pacing is terrible. We get about the first thirty minutes with nothing but setup for what's going to happen next. We get stupid looking action scenes with pitiful CGI robots being defeated. On top of all that, it's an ugly looking film.There's not even that much to say because there's nothing that really happens in this movie. We get dumb scene after dumb scene of stuff being shot up. There's some story and twists about robots. There are probably a million plot holes that I could go over, but I honestly wasn't even paying that much attention because it was such a vile looking film. I think the creators may have been sued for plagiarism once or twice, but they need to just stop making movies. It's a disorganized mess from beginning to end. 1/2 star

OK, sum up this train wreck of a movie in one word; awful. I saw the listing for this movie following a TRANSFORMERS marathon on TV. I knew by the title that it was going to be a hooooorrible ripoff of Transformers, but I thought to myself, "Hey, what the hell. Maybe it'll be good for a laugh." ... bad idea. Very bad.. I was going to hold back on the comments as I can be very opinionated, especially growing up in Hollywood North and producing animated shorts of my own. But after reading Jeff McDonald's review titled "Doesn't live up to the hype", I decided I could no longer bite my tongue.. er, ..fingers. Jeff; I seriously hope you were joking around when you wrote that. If you had half a clue, you would realize those toys you spent all that time playing with, were actually called TransFORMERS, the catch-phrase was "Robots in DISGUISE" (hence being able to transform) and his name is OPTIMUS. There was no such cartoon in the 80's called Transmorphers but there was one called Transformers. It even had a swear word! The villain group of the race are known as the DecePticons and when mentioning characters such as Honeybee, Chazz and Sunscreen, I believe you're referring to BUMBLEbee, Jazz and STARSCREAM. As for Magnadoodle, I believe you may be referring to Etch-a-Sketch? (lol) Finally, it's "More than meets the eye". Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to mock you or call you out, but please, oh please, for the love of God, get your facts straight before writing a review or claim to be a fan, when clearly you have no idea what you're talking about. It must have been disappointing for this movie not living up to the hype, considering you weren't even watching the right one? Perhaps you have (or will) check out the actual movie since writing your review. After this disgrace of a film, you may be pleasantly surprised.That being said, I was disappointed in myself for sitting through this film. I don't think they could have ripped off Transformers harder if they tried, right down to the Frenzy-like character that took on the form of a cellphone, although I almost laughed myself to death at the terrible acting as this non-moving robot killed the woman driving. The effects, both CGI (if it can be called that) and practical effects were that of an amateur's and the audio was terrible as well as out-of-sync. I almost thought I was watching the old TV show Thunderbirds during certain scenes and even found myself looking for puppet strings. When an actor films every shot he or she is in, in a single day, you can tell that not a lot of effort was put into making this. I still find myself in shock that this monstrosity somehow managed to spawn a sequel, not that I'll be hanging around to see it. I wouldn't have paid $2.50 to see this, let-alone the $250,000 it cost to produce. Maybe next time the money could be used to buy an original idea. As mentioned before, I too lost time and brain cells at the hands of this disaster, so, before you think to yourself this may be fun to watch, let me save you some time by saying "it's not worth it". Just remember, brain cells don't regenerate!

From reading the bulk of the reviews one wouldn't be mistaken for thinking most people actually thought this was Transformers and were bitterly disappointed and left wondering what all the hype was about. However the point of this review isn't to compare it to Transformers.The acting was wooden at times but the characters were quite likable to the point of caring for them, and even the General grew on me during the course of the film. These certainly aren't Oscar winning performances, but there is a reason these guys are in films like Transmorphers. Job well done.The CGI was pretty awful, but it was nothing more or nothing less than what I was expecting. The director did not have Michael Bay's budget at his disposal; criticizing Transmorphers for its CGI would be akin to complaining a holiday to the Arctic was ruined because it was too cold.Despite what many others have said, I really liked the plot even if it did get a little 'messy' at times. There isn't really much to it to comment on, but I felt it was well paced and the characters were likable. Accepting the CGI, the action scenes were pretty cool and I thought the ending was quite fitting and even a little sad on some levelsYes, parts of it probably didn't make any sense and were daft, but who cares, its a fun Sci-Fi film.Just as you wouldn't go into an Action Film expecting a Romantic Comedy, you shouldn't watch DTV films expecting something that they aren't. Providing you can manage that, I fully recommend Transmorphers and I can honestly say I enjoyed it more than Transformers itself (although Megan Fox was sorely missed).In my opinion movies are all about entertainment, and while thousands of movies are light years ahead Transmorphers from an artistic perspective, I'm going to rate score this on entertainment levels. 7/10Lastly, and something that for some unknown reason bugged me throughout - I know it was stormy outside, but who wears swimming goggles in the rain!?!