With the announcement that the transformers the movie will be hitting theaters for a limited time in the fall I thought I'd write my review of the beloved film. Man I LOVE IT. It's ones of those films that you know isn't that great but you watch it any way. The animation is Truely a specifical and the music by Vince dicola is a soundtrack that I listen to over and over again aaaah it's an amazing score. The plot is pretty simple and bearbones it's nothing special but one thing you won't be while watching this is bored like I said it's one big ball of 80s fun just listening to the soundtrack alone. If your a transformers fan A MUST WATCH. An animation fan A MUST WATCH. Or just a hardcore 80s nostalgia attict A MUST WATCH. But due to the below average not engaging story gotta give it a 6/10

This film is overall an 8 - great.The soundtrack is great, the voice acting is good, the plot is mostly engaging and the animation is very well done. The only issues I can think of is that the action isn't very entertaining, but this couldn't be helped. It was the best they could do for the 80s. And there is one annoying character, but mercifully he's not in the film often. Overall, this is a great flick worth a viewing because it's genuinely well done. For a first attempt at a full length Transformers film, it's not bad at all.

I really wanted to rate this one higher, really, I did, but there are just one too many things holding this movie back for me to call it anything more than "above average".The first main issue with this movie is how it mistakes "kill a whole bunch of people off" for "dark". There's a lot of character deaths in this film, most of them happening to characters that aren't established well enough for them to have much emotional meaning. I know, this was made for fans of the show, but this is also a feature film. It needs to stand or fall on its own, and fall this film does. Kinda hard.For the main problem with the film, you see, is tone. This movie goes from mess-your-drawers planet-eating monstrosity to kick-ass 1980s opening song in an instant, and the tonal whiplash HURTS, man. Then there's the moment where Galvatron walks in and he doesn't just MURDER, Starscream, he turns the dude into ash and then crushes the crown he was wearing, all from a blast with that Hanna-Barbara "shyoomp" sound effect attached to it. I get that it was something on the show, but this goofy sound instantly sucked all the menace out of Galvatron. Tell a good story first, appease raging fanboys like myself LAST. Finally, the story itself plays more like a three-part episode from the show than a movie. After Optimus's death, the movie just meanders from scene to scene with the Autobots trying to evade Galvatron while working their way towards their home planet Cybertron in order to stop Unicron from eating it. There's a lot of popcorn action, but roughly half of it involves. Shoot, the good guys only learn Unicron's name by sheer coincidence, in a subplot that's completely disconnected from the main one, on some planet with some kind of weird law system where the innocent are put to death and... I have no idea what happens to guilty, nor can I fathom it. Point is, that whole detour, again, comes off like the plot to a filler episode rather than a plot beat of a movie. Oh, and Unicron's defeat is a complete deus ex machina. His opponent never even fights him proper, he just opens this Matrix of Leadership thing and then Unicron blows up. Makes you wonder why previous Autobot leaders didn't go out and do that, you know, BEFORE Unicron set his sights on Cybertron.On top of that, Unicron himself manages to get progressively less threatening as the film goes on. When he starts, I was genuinely frightened of him as I watched him devour the screaming inhabitants of a planet and grind them up into primordial soup to power his veins. And then he wet himself when he realized he'd sent a tyrant off to collect the one thing that could destroy him, and then he transformed into his robot form and proceeded to get his eyes blown out and his head blow off, all while systematically shrinking as the animation severely downsized his scale in contrast to the "normal" sized Transformers. He had his moments, and he was certainly a threat worthy of a feature film, but overall I felt he was squandered in the end.By all rights, I should find this movie pretty forgettable. Outside of Galvatron icing Starscream, the death of Optimus Prime, and the sheer pants-darkening terror that was Unicron's first scene in the movie, there's nothing to this for me to really keep. I'm not a G1 Transformers fan. I grew up watching Armada and later checked out Transformers Prime, and this movie banks pretty heavily on its audience already being fans.That is, except for one thing: THE MUSIC. Holy crap, this movie has a soundtrack to rival the likes of Star Wars and Highlander in its sheer, magnanimous badassitude. As Team Four Star proved in their Bardock Abridged special, you could stick some of these kick-ass hair metal tunes over any kind of action scene and they would fit like a glove. Unicron's medley as he prowls across space and eats a planet is equally frightening as the scene itself is, and Optimus Prime's death is sold almost entirely on the music. Prior to that, Prime had maybe 2 scenes and no substantial character moments to speak of, so there's nothing to get attached to in the movie itself.I'd rate this movie as merely "above average", but this soundtrack is so awesome that I can't in good conscience rate it any lower than I did. If you're not a Transformers fan, just skip the movie and put on the soundtrack. I wasn't lying when I implied that it's one of the best movie soundtracks I'd ever heard.

I was enticed into watching Transformers: The Movie after watching an episode of the surprisingly funny The Goldbergs, currently airing for the first time in the UK. In the episode, the physically underdeveloped nerd of the family watches in awe as the movie version of his favourite weekend cartoon plays out across the cinema screen. His face soon turns to sheer horror when his beloved heroes are routinely blown away by the evil Decepticons, and I was immediately transported back in time. Not only does the bespectacled Adam Goldberg (played by Sean Giambrone) remind me of my older brother, but I instantly recalled my own horror at seeing the likes of Ratchet, Ironhide and Prowl being casually blown to pieces.Your enjoyment of Transformers: The Movie really depends on whether you roll your eyes or clap your hands like a child at the sound of un-ironic 80's cheese blaring over sketchy animation of giant robots. No will claim that this is a work of high art or even narratively consistent, but if you're even remotely invested in the ensemble of Autobots, the ensuing blood-bath (oil-bath?) will still no doubt be shocking. Characters are dismembered, decapitated and shot execution-style. Casual viewers or newcomers may have trouble distinguishing one Transformer from the next (something that the live-action Michael Bay movies struggle with), but the relentless carnage at least makes for a refreshing experience to the usual child-friendly fare.It also has Unicron, the big bad guy who is so huge he transforms into a planet. Voiced by Orson Welles in one of his last feature films, his operatic, ham-fisted growl combined with that opening tune still has the ability to give me chills. While Unicron commits planetary genocide in the opening moments, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) plans an all- out assault on the Decepticons. Prime's opposite number Megatron (Frank Welker) hears of the plans and attacks first, leaving the Autobots scattered and on the defensive. Following an attack on Autobot City, the Autbots flee with Megatron wounded and blasted into outer space. But Unicron wants the Matrix, a talisman of great power currently in the hands of Autobot Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack), and so re-creates Megatron as Galvatron (Leonard Nimoy) to recover it.The narrative consists of little more than one action scene after the next, full of explosions, gun-play, and fan-favourites the Dinobots cracking-wise. While these moments are generally entertaining and lovingly realised, they soon become quite tiresome. When good guy Hot Rod (Judd Nelson) lands on planet Junk and is attacked by the motorcycle-riding natives led by Wreck-Gar (Eric Idle), I just longed for some of them to sit down and have a conversation. This leads to a disappointingly underwhelming climax as Hot Rod, Galvatron and Unicron finally face-off. The animation is rather jittery but incredibly stylish, in a style seemingly lost with modern-day cartoons. I may be nit-picking, but it's only because I believe that Transformers: The Movie deserves to be taken seriously, and although it's far from perfect, it will always retain a place in the hearts of us children of the 80's.