Sweethearts Candy Blog's

The nicest thing I can say about "Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon" (opening June 29 at 9pm throughout San Diego in an attempt to pad the weekend box office with a few extra IMAX/3D dollars) is that it's better than "Sucker Punch," which is currently holding firm as my choice for worst film of the year.
"Transformers 3" is also better than "Transformers 2" but that film was so bad that 5-year olds animating their action figures could have made a better movie. In fact, Michael Bay's "Transformers" franchise has been nothing but painful to me. I would much rather watch the old animated TV show or animated feature film -- those were fun. Bay's films are big, noisy endurance tests that pummel viewers for more than two hours at a pop. These big, bloated summer action epics are meant to be mindless fun -- they definitely display a lot of the former but not much of the latter. I realize, though, that Bay has his fans and that they cannot be swayed in their devotion to him. So I understand that this review is unlikely to change any opinions -- you're either in Bay's camp or your not. But here goes anyway for those who may feel a similar need to vent about these mega-budget, effects driven films.
"T3" opens with a badly CGI-ed President Kennedy (that's Kennedy's second appearance this summer, he also figured into "X-Men: First Class") talking about the space program. The CGI facial work was so atrocious that I felt embarrassed for the film. Get it right or just don't even bother trying. Then we cut to actual archival footage of the president so we can see just how bad the CGI prez really is. Then Bay badly mixes grainy archive footage and crisp newly shot images with no attempt to make any of it match. But who the hell cares it's just the pre-credit backstory.