Patrick Dempsey – Movie Musings

Sexist, violent, crude and deeply disgusting. Transformers continues to make you weep for your childhood memories

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Shia LaBeouf (Sam Witwicky), Josh Duhamel (Colonel William Lennox), John Turturro (Seymour Simmons), Tyrese Gibson (Robert Epps), Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (Carly Spencer), Patrick Dempsey (Dylan Gould), John Malkovich (Bruce Brazos), Frances McDormand (Charlotte Mearing), Kevin Dunn (Ron Witwicky), Julie White (Judy Witwicky), Alan Tudyk (Dutch Gerhardt)

I’m ashamed to say when I saw it in the cinema I sort of enjoyed it. Goes to show how the excitement of a trip out can make the most ghastly, horrible, vile piece of work feel like fun. Even at the time, I recognised enjoying Transformers: Dark of the Moon was like becoming engaged with the story-telling in a porno. Doesn’t change the fact it’s a crude exercise, pandering to your baser instincts.

The plot? Autobots. Decepticons. Blah, blah, blah. Don’t worry if you’ve not seen the previous films: this merrily contradicts them. In the 60s an Autobot ship crashes on the moon, the moon landings were all about exploring the wreckage. In the present day our “hero” Sam (a never more annoying, unlikable Shia LaBeouf) can’t land a job and the Decepticons hatch a plan to destroy the planet by bringing their homeworld Cybertron here. Former Autobot Boss Sentinal Prime betrays everyone. Optimus Prime doubles down on being a psychopath. It’s very loud and makes no sense.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon exposes Michael Bay’s aesthetics as those of a porn director. Everything is crude, huge, brash, obvious, tries to do as much work for you as possible and panders to your worst instincts. Dark of the Moon is shocking in almost every possible sense: from its crude sexism and leering camera, its revoltingly heavy-handed, end-of-the-pier, terminally unfunny comic relief, its overlong, explosive battle sequences (shot with the slavering longing of a pornographic gang-bang). Dark of the Moon is a revolting film, a disgusting perversion of what was a kids cartoon.

Can you imagine letting a child watch this? Let’s deal with its disgusting sexism first. Megan Kelly had been sacked between this and Revenge of the Fallen for denouncing Michael Bay’s working basis (I’ll admit calling him Hitler went too far). Every chance in the film to disparage her character is taken (two appallingly unpleasant tiny Autobots all but call her a bitch). She’s replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, introduced walking up-stairs, the camera starting at her feet and trailing up, lingering on her bottom (she’s wearing just a slightly-too short shirt). Later two characters will discuss “the perfect curves” of a car – while the camera pans up her body. Those are only the most egregious of the deeply uncomfortable sexual objectification of this poor woman.

How about its crude humour? Several actors enter a private competition to give the loudest, least funny comic cameo. Malkovich gurns and rants as Sam’s pointless, kung-fu obsessed boss. John Turturro does whatever he wants as a Transformers obsessed former-agent. Kevin Dunn and Julie White are eat-your-fist levels of unfunny as Sam’s parents. Worst of all is Ken Jeung as a Deep Throat style informer whose every scene is crammed with homophobic jokes about anal and oral sex. Remember, once upon a time this was for kids. All this alleged humour does is add to the already bloated run-time. You’ll suffer through every single word, because you certainly won’t miss it due to laughing. Bay’s idea of funny is if the joke is delivered LOUD by a wild-eyed actor, preferably accompanied by a whip-pan. He’d probably love Roy Chubby Brown.

The film has two of the least likable heroes perhaps ever placed on film. Shia LaBeouf must have genuinely hated himself by the time he made this. Perhaps that’s why he makes no effort to make Sam even one per cent likeable. Sam is a whining, petulant man-child, alternating between bitching about his job to bragging about his trophy girlfriend (whom he spends half the film whiningly chasing). In the first of these films, LaBeouf had a goofy charm. Now the character is just a deeply arrogant little prick, with major entitlement issues. LaBeouf shouts and screams throughout, but mostly just looks really angry at himself for even being there.

Then we come to the pièce de resistance: Optimus Prime. When I was a kid, this noble warrior was like the perfect Dad. Traumatised kids wept when he died in the animated movie. Revenge of the Fallen started turning him into a violent killer. This completes the journey. Bay probably thinks Prime is a bad-ass taking names. He’s actually a violent, psychopathic killer who arrives at a battle with the inspiring words “We will kill them all”. Prime allows the whole of Chicago to be destroyed (at the cost of millions of lives) to prove a point to the stupid humans. At the film’s end he reacts to Megatron’s offer of a truce by ripping out his spine and then executes Sentinel Prime by shooting him point blank in the head while Sentinel pleads for his life. Ladies and gentlemen: our hero.

It’s customary to say the special effects are good, so: the special effects are good. The violence is pornographic, shot often in slow-mo, with explosions, fast editing and huge noise filling the screen. Transformer bodies are mauled, beheaded, eviscerated. There are several rather chilling executions. Prime rips out the equivalent of heart, lungs, eyes and brains. Bay adds a reddish oil to the transformers, which looks like blood spraying up. Just like the humour, the action goes on FOREVER. The final Chicago battle takes up fifty minutes of buildings falling, brutal slaughter and triumphalist flag-waving. After repeated viewings it’s not just boring, it starts getting offensive.

Dark of the Moon is, quite simply, only just (only, only, only just) better than Revenge of the Fallen – and it says it all that it’s because it’s not as racist. In every other sense it’s simply revolting: violent, crude, sexist and homophobic. This is a horrible, horrible film made by a soulless director. It genuinely is like a beautifully shot pornographic film that wants you to respect the craft that’s gone into it while you finish yourself off. For a brief few seconds you might get sucked in – but you’ll certainly not be boasting about it afterwards.

Amy Adams excels as Disney heroine in the real world Giselle in Enchanted

Director: Kevin Lima

Cast: Amy Adams (Giselle), Patrick Dempsey (Robert Philip), James Marsden (Prince Edward), Susan Sarandon (Queen Narissa), Timothy Spall (Nathaniel), Idina Menzel (Nancy Tremaine), Rachel Covey (Morgan Philip)

With Disney devoting themselves full-time to remaking their back catalogue of classics, replacing animation with live actors, it’s nice to be reminded how imaginative combining animation and live actors can actually be. Enchanted is an original story, packed with charm and feel-good warmth – and for my money it’s streets ahead of the production-line remakes churning out of Disney.

In the animated world of Andalasia, Giselle (Amy Adams) is the classic Disney heroine – singing joyfully, talking with animals, all the usual trappings. She falls (instantly, of course) in love with the dashing Prince Edward (James Marsden), but Edward’s cruel step-mother Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) is determined to thwart the match so she can retain the crown. On Giselle’s wedding day, Narissa pushes her through a magic well to a place where there are no happy endings: modern day New York. Stuck in the real world, Giselle meets quietly disillusioned family lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey) and his 6 year old daughter Morgan – can Giselle adjust to the modern world? Can Edward save her? And will she want to go back?

The star turn is Amy Adams, and she is terrific. This is one of those performances that looks easy, but is in fact extraordinarily difficult. She simultaneously plays a fairytale character in the real world, with a cartoon’s outlook and understanding, but also subtly deepens and enriches this character with real world traits, developing and growing her personality to become someone who feels “real”. She does this without jarring gear changes or sudden swings – and holds both these characterisations together simultaneously. So Giselle’s fundamental personality doesn’t change, while her outlook and understanding changes dramatically. She’s endearing, a wonderful light comedian, and her singing and dancing is terrific. It’s not too much of a jump to say she basically is the movie.

And an enchanting movie it certainly is, one part affectionate recreation of Disney, one part affectionate send-up. Relocating the conventions and style of a Disney movie to the real world allows a lot of fun, as Giselle musters the animals of New York to help her clean (pigeons, rats and flies) or recruits the people of Central Park into an extended song and dance routine while Robert looks on with bemused confusion. It helps that the songs are so well written – Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz’s tunes are basically classic Disney tunes with a satirical bent, which means it’s perfectly possible to enjoy both for what they are and for the dry commentary they offer on Disney.

In fact that’s why the film works so well: it is so blinking affectionate. There is no cruelty about it and none of the tedious “smarter than thou” referencing of, say, Shrek. Instead it teases Disney, while simultaneously understanding the vast majority of us love these films: that if we had the chance, as Nancy does, we might well jack in the real world for a fairytale. We don’t want “gags for the grown-ups” or dumb film references: if a film concentrates on making itself sincere and engaging, it will engage both adults and children at the same time.

The film really successfully bowls along, full of entertaining charms and gags. In fact the appeal of the fish-out-of-water plotline with Giselle is so effective the sub-plot around the villainous Queen Narissa actually becomes less interesting. While the presence of a villain of this type is a pretty central part of the Disney structure, it never quite comes together here – it feels like something inserted due to the rules of the genre rather than an organic part of the story. Now it is essential there is some peril to propel the story forward, but Narissa just isn’t quite interesting enough (and the final battle with a CGI dragon, while a great recreation of similar moments isn’t really gripping). Fundamentally the emotional and dramatic culmination of the film is Giselle realising what she wants – and it’s this compelling human story that powers the film.

But this is a niggle in a charming and very funny film. Amy Adams is of course the star, but Patrick Dempsey very successfully adds warmth to the “stick-in-the-mud” straight man who flourishes as the film progresses (in a nice touch, he slowly takes on the very singing, dancing, cartooney traits he finds so bemusing in Giselle). James Marsden has huge fun as the gently egomaniacal Prince Edward, providing many of the film’s belly laughs with his unreconstructed fairy-tale hero view of the world.

Enchanted works so well because it’s both a subtle commentary on Disney fairytale films and also a marvellous fairytale itself. With a terrific performance from Amy Adams (how did she not get an Oscar nomination for this?) and some cracking songs, the film is wonderfully entertaining, making some gentle fun of its genre, while also celebrating it. It only wants to entertain and enchant you – and it certainly succeeds.