After watching the steaming pile Hollywood just passed off as Transformers 2, I asked my friend Matt Wayt for his review.  I went to college with Matt and I remember the brilliant movie reviews he used to write.*

Unfortunately, Matt had been smart enough to NOT see the film, so I had to settle for his review of the first Transformers movie.  I think it applies equally well to the second.

I knew I had it somewhere. Back in the day (two years ago) I was posting on a message board and wrote a lot of quasi-professional reviews. But I couldn’t hold back with Transformers. So I wrote something very juvenile and passionate. Enjoy:

Seriously, fuck this movie.

Let’s take a sort-of vintage product, suck out any semblance of charm it had, process it with cold, distant blockbuster standby’s, throw in some product placement, a hot girl and lots of overhead shots of the Pentagon while the digital scene setting zooms through reading, “The Pentagon,” and then have the audacity to make it two and half hours just because.

Guys, really, fuck this movie.

Fuck this movie because Shia’s character, who begins as a headache-inducing oddball, becomes increasingly annoying and unlikable, yet you still have to root for him because he was here before most of the other characters.

Fuck this movie because Megan Fox doesn’t convincingly sell anything to the audience but her figure.

Fuck this movie because all of the amazing technical work that went into creating the transformers is often truncated because the they are, for some reason, shot in extreme close-up during most of the transformations… which completely robs from what should compare to the moment we first saw the Brachiosaurus in Jurassic Park.

Fuck this movie because that stupid asshole annoying little transformer shit steals a lot of screen time from other stuff that sucks but at least has the decency to be huge, and because it is able to sneak through Air Force Fucking One and walk across the runway without anyone seeing it. And an additional fuck: fuck the stupid mischievous cartoon noises he makes. This is where you try for charm, Michael Bay? With this fucking thing?

Fuck computer hackers who look like models.

Fuck Anthony Anderson playing LOUD CRASS BLACK MAN. GET IT? HE’S GOT ATTITUDE. AND HE’S BLACK. AND HE’S A REDSKINS FAN. A BLACK REDSKINS FAN. HE WEARS HIS JERSEY AND YELLS A LOT. BLAAACCCKK.

Fuck the Army guys and how they’re not charismatic or interesting at all.

Fuck how a typical beginning for Shia’s character being an awkward teenager lasts for half the fucking movie and becomes increasingly more resistant to a bigger, more important plot through random segues. Oh no, the dog peed on the transformer! Oh no, the transformer stepped on his mom’s flowers–uh nah he di-in! Oh no, transformers are hiding from Shia’s parents! Hope their massive bodies of alien technology don’t rattle the shingles too hard or else Shia’s fat, retarded parents might notice their presence!

Fuck John Turturro for being one of the most irritating characters I’ve ever seen in a film.

Fuck random bits of stupid writing that aren’t set up and are not believable under the circumstances presented in the film, like when the cop at the beginning starts goading Shia to make a move or some shit for no reason. This isn’t fucking funny, fuckers.

Fuck how most of the excitement doesn’t come until the last half hour.

Fuck Ebonics Robot.

Fuck eight shots to show a helicopter flying when one would due.

Fuck that Linkin Park song. Fuck it the second time it’s used. And fuck it when Bay uses it for something in the future.

This is a movie made for teenage boys who wear beach-bead necklaces with shirt-sleeved collared shirts and need something cool and wouldn’t know good execution if it killed their parents and for their girlfriends who come along and need extra drama to pay attention to in between texts with their friends at the mall. Fuck these people, and fuck this movie.

* Please leave comments and tell Matt to keep writing reviews!

Last night I went into Puntarenas for Carnaval and shared a taxi back with the Canadian girls and Iraqi vets who are vacationing at my bed and breakfast.

On the way home, we were stopped by the police barricade. The policia are stopping cars and buses going in and out of Puntarenas to check IDs. This is mainly to sketch out those who might be trying to bring drugs into Carnaval, and also to catch those who are in the country illegally – such as tourists who have overstayed their visa and illegal immigrants from Nicaragua.

I had to explain this to my friends, because they were wasted and freaked out and they don’t speak Spanish. One of the guys kept yelling “amigo, amigo, no problema, don’t arrest me!” The cops laughed at him. We all gave them our passport photocopies (can’t carry the real thing around or you’ll lose it and really be in trouble) and they checked them out and sent us on our way.*

This explanation began a discussion in our taxi about the racism between Costa Ricans (ticos) and Nicaraguans (nicas). Nicaragua is to Costa Rica as Mexico is to the United States. There is more money and more jobs on the other side of the border, and many poor people cross that border for the opportunities they can’t get at home.

When the bed and breakfast was robbed recently (someone hopped over the back yard fence and stole everything they could reach through the window bars), the cops told us it was probably a gang of Nicaraguans who they believe have been roaming the beaches. Uh-huh, right. They sound really on top of the investigation.

Here’s a video a friend just sent me, illustrating this from the Nicaraguan point of view:

Enrique Flores habla de los ticos

I speak Spanish and I can’t follow all that he’s saying, but the basic idea is that he is he hates ticos, and thinks they are maricones, because of the way ticos believe that all nicas are stupid, slow and lazy.  Here’s a nice quote, though -

“What the idiot Costa Rican doesn’t know is that if there is a war, with all the Nicaraguans that are in Costa Rica… (we will win)”

He also says that when he goes to Costa Rica, the locals can tell he is Nica and they say “go back to Nicaragua!”

The phrase “pura vida” makes him particularly angry.  It reminds me of the phrase “the American dream” in the United States, and how some white people think it applies only to them.

*Sidenote: the police did not care that there were four of us crammed into the back seat without seatbelts, or that we had open containers of beer.