We went out last night to see Transformers for my birthday. I had heard from some friends that they liked it, so I went in sort of interested and came out feeling like this was the coolest thing ever.

The idea is that the Transformers are robots from another planet that have come to Earth in search of an energy cube called the All Spark that gives them life.  If the evil Decepticons get ahold of it before the friendly Autobots do, the world’s in serious trouble.

Yeah, it sounds sort of lame.  But it really wasn’t.  For people even mildly interested in sci fi robot movies, I really don’t think you’ll be disappointed.  There was all of the robot battling and transforming you would expect to see - it was an effects extravaganza.  Lots of action, as expected from Michael Bay, and at no time did I feel like I was bored or losing interest.

For fans of the cartoons it’s even better.  They got Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime, to do the voice in the movie and it’s definitely something you notice.  When he whips out the “Autobots! Roll out!” you get the shivers of positive childhood memories.  They throw in a couple of references to “More Than Meets The Eye,” too, which is cool.  (When they say it, listen to the theater crowd.  The people who snicker are the kids who grew up in the 80’s.)  And if you paid close attention to the names, you’ll even notice that the original show had characters with the last name “Witwicky” (the main character in this movie was “Sam Witwicky,” played by Shia LaBeouf).

The human actors (funny that I have to qualify that…) are also pretty good.  Shia LaBeouf is a great high school nerd character and Megan Fox plays a popular high school girl character.  Both are very entertaining to watch.  Josh Duhamel plays an Air Force captain and does a great job, too (I’ve only ever really seen him on Las Vegas).  You have to imagine Duhamel saw the script and didn’t even read it before accepting - no child of the 80’s could pass up the chance to be in a freaking Transformers movie.  No way I could.

At the end we clapped, because, you know, the actors can hear you clapping in the theater.  I think that’s actually how you know you liked the movie - you feel like clapping at the end.  Jenn claims to have been slightly disappointed because they didn’t play the original theme from the TV show at any point, but besides that, they gave us everything we wanted.

I definitely got my money’s worth and I’m hoping this hits HD DVD sooner rather than later.  Good times.