Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

Transformers movies have been a tough row to hoe. I always thought the toys were cool and I even had a couple but by the time I was really cognizant they had kind of passed their prime. No pun intended. Or maybe they hadn’t yet and I was just semi oblivious to them. All I know is, most kids around me had G.I.Joe and He-Man toys. Transformers seemed far off. So when these movies came out I was kind of like “Meh. Could be fun.” But they didn’t really strike some nostalgic chord for me. Which is why I observed these rather objectively.

The first live action Transformers film was entertaining enough for the most part but when one character suggested they take that cube thing through the city to keep it from the enemy (you know, the cube that turns automobiles into killer robots?) yeah, let’s take it through the automobile laden city. Nothing bad could happen. And John Voight, ever the voice of reason up to this point, says, “That’s good!”

No it’s not, John Voight! It’s not good! That’s a bad idea! So I kind of signed off mentally at that point and even though I’ve seen most of the sequels, I’ve never really been invested in them. When that one installment showed the huge robot’s dangling robo-testicles, I gave up entirely. I confess, I watch some stupid STUPID shyte but that… that was just too stupid.

When Bumblebee, The Last Knight, and the one with the robot gorilla came along I was like “No thanks, I’m a go watch a eight hour documentary about the evolution of Castlevania games. Thank you very much.” By the way, they’re all pay-to-win mobile games now, if you wanted to know.

But then my wife says; she says, “Nah, yo, Bumblebee is tight! You gotta see that shiznit, dawg!”

And I’m like, “For real?”

And she’s like, “Yeah! Witness it.”

Well, I can hardly refuse a recommendation from her, especially when she does her excellent Michael Peña impression. So we sit down and watch Bumblebee, and you know what? I liked it.

What’s more, my son liked it and now he wants to watch the rest of them with me.

I really hope he doesn’t have any questions about robo-jingle balls. Explaining to him exactly what Meagan Fox is is going to be hard enough without having to get into the specifics of robo-anatomy.

You know what this movie did? It made Bumblebee lovable. That is where all the predecessors to this movie failed. You actually care about the characters in this film. It’s not just a bunch of robots smashing into each other and Shia Lebouf screaming “OPTIMUUUUUUUUS!!!”

This might be old man Professor Popinjay talking but I appreciated the female lead in Bumblebee not being so objectified by herself or the director. The other films didn’t seem to know who the audience was nor what would appeal to them. Call me a prude but Meagan Fox was filmed too provocatively for kids and she’s too young for their parents. The 20 year olds at that time could not have cared less about these movies so why was she there except for Michael Bay’s personal satisfaction? Ew.

Anyway, it’s 6:30 pm. Time to take my pills, remove my teeth and hit the hay.