Transformers: O Início

Besides the raucous, de rigueur action sequences, Transformers One provides numerous witty jokes of both the verbal and visual variety and -- surprise, surprise -- genuine emotion. Consider this a franchise revitalized.

While still delivering the fun and excitement expected of Hasbro's metamorphosizing robots, Transformers One approaches the well-known characters with a degree of nuance and complexity that marks the most sophisticated onscreen portrait of them to date.

It's all executed competently but joylessly, with zero fun to be had as it labors across an hour and 40 minute runtime that feels both too short and painfully long.

After decades of experience with the Transformers in various forms, I have come to the following conclusion: They make better toys than movies.

Even if you don't care two cans of WD-40 about the origin story... Its themes of friendship and underdog heroism, along with a visually impressive design and clean storytelling form a truly appealing film.

Fills in the backstory for the legendary "robots in disguise," but there's little here for viewers who come in with no investment in this universe, cinematic or otherwise.

A realm without physical limits is truly where the Transformers belong, but it doesn't stop the film from delivering some surprising pathos while it's there.

A usually dumbed-down franchise gets a jolt of intelligence and spirit in this solid animated entry.

Transformers One isn't good enough to watch on a plane, even a trans-Pacific flight. The inflight map is better.

The animation in "Transformers One" is spectacular and lavishly detailed, and plummets us into a whole new, intriguing world.

For others less enthused, it's exhausting. The machine doesn't care. It just whams away. Implacable. Unstoppable. Unhuman.

I've been transformed into a fan thanks to well-designed action scenes, an origin story drawing from classic sources, and A-list actors bringing their A-game as voice talent.

For a familiar franchise, this feels like a new beginning.

It's so earnest, bringing notes of freshness and innocence to a prequel that, by all rights, shouldn't have had any.

I had a thought that seemed at once plausible and absurd. Taking in its landscape of moody pastel skies and jagged spears of metal and rock overgrown by vines and purple-pink moss, I wondered: Is this Transformers movie inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky?

Cooley's film makes a good spinoff suddenly seem simple: Sometimes all you need is the imagination for heroes and villains, betrayal and glory - and heaps of plastic to smash together.

This installment definitely benefits from the low expectations instilled by its predecessors, but that doesn't take away from how its trio of writers create a consistently humorous script brimming with witty banter and quips that mostly land.

[A] lot of people are going to have a grand time watching Transformers One. Sadly, I am not one of them.

This animated prequel is a refreshing entry to the Transformers franchise.

It's got lots of smashy-bashy action, satisfyingly crunchy silly machine Transformation, it's got a not-so-subtle message about power corrupting, and it's even got a couple of jokes that I actually laughed at.