Transformers: Age of Extinction

Expectations:
To describe my relationship with Transformers as a guilty pleasure would be quite an understatement. The film critic side of my brain knows that there is very little about the film series that could be considered even remotely noteworthy or mentionable, but the other side of my brain, which really loves watching cars turn into robots, really enjoys many things about these brainless films. For example, I love the humor that Shia LaBeouf, Kevin Dunn, and Julie White brought to the first three films. Also, I like to watch cars TURN INTO ROBOTS!!! In fact, I even loved Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon, which were both hated by a majority of critics. So... Let's get to Age of Extinction... With Shia LaBeouf and crew removed from the storyline, I was quite leery of how the human side of things would pan out in this fourth franchise installment. However, regardless of the success of the newly installed Mark Wahlberg (who I am not a huge fan of), I clung to the fact that cars would be turning into robots. I mean, how can you screw that up???

Plot:
While I didn't expect Mark Wahlberg's Cade Yeager to live up to LaBeouf's Sam Witwicky, I had hoped that I wouldn't hate him quite so much. Unfortunately, the lack of humor really sucked a lot of the life out of a film bordering 3 hours in length. As expected, when the film focused on the autobots, I was quite entertained, but I just didn't care about Yeager's financial struggles or his unexplained desire to shelter his daughter. The only human-based storyline that I did enjoy was that of Stanley Tucci's Joshua Joyce, although this film was quite unworthy of Tucci's excellence. However, Joyce's fascination with the technology of the transformers did feel appropriate and actually brought up a few questionable social issues that the real world will soon be facing, when it comes to techonological advances. Overall, the awesomeness of Optimus Prime kept me entertained, but, unlike the past three films, there were many moments where I wondered how much longer the film was going to be dragged out. If only the film had been solely about the government, technology companies, and alien robots (yeah, just three big things), it probably would have been a lot better (and at least an hour shorter).

Characters:
As I've now said 50 times, the humans were disappointing, and the robots were awesome! While Tucci's storyline actually fit into the film quite well, it still wasn't perfect, and there is no doubt that everything would have been better without Marky Mark and his family coming along for the ride. In fact there were multiple occasions where they were unnecessarily brought into scenes where robots were fighting or plotting, which ended up being really awkward. Additionally, the only truly comedic human in the entire film was T.J. Miller's Lucas. While Miller always cracks me up, his absence from the majority of the film was quite a disappointment to me.

Negatives:
Humans

Positives:
Alien Robots

Conclusion:
As my movie-watching habits and expectations have matured over the past few years, it's not hard to believe that my desire for Transformers-esque films has greatly decreased. At the same time, I have become much more appreciative of action flicks that can get it right, such as The Avengers, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Star Trek. Unfortunately, the Transformers franchise has not quite been able to keep up with my heightened expectations, and, as long as Mark Wahlberg is involved, I don't think that will change. Even so, I still love all things Transformers, and the film was not a complete bust. The cars still turned into robots, so... AWESOME! I'm hopeful that the franchise will improve with the inevitable fifth film, but, either way, I still have three awesome movies that I can watch over and over! I give Transformers: Age of Extinction 2.54 out of 5 stars.

Ted

Expectations:
As everyone knows, Ted was sold on the fact that it is the creation of Seth McFarlane of Family Guy fame. Honestly, I am not a huge fan of Family Guy. It is funny, but it has too many stupid, stupid moments for me. However, there is no denying that McFarlane and crew are geniuses when it comes to creating stories and characters. Because I knew of McFarlane's genius, I knew that I would be pleased with the outcome of Ted. The trailer was hilarious... The idea was amazing... And there was even a great cast. The only unsure thing was whether or not McFarlane could create a complete story with some substance over the course of one and a half hours.

Plot:
Much to my surprise, there was a fairly deep plot for a comedy. Actually, it was too deep. There was this huge attempt to establish some sort of emotional connection to the characters, which works in some comedies. However, it did not work with Ted. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't awful, but it would have been much better if they had gone with the straight up raw, dirty comedic approach. It is just so hard to take a talking teddy bear seriously.

Characters:
While the connection or plot between the characters was not so great, the individual characters were, for the most part, decent. The only big problem I had character-wise was that Ted was not quite the center of attention. It really felt like John (Mark Wahlberg) was the main character. I have nothing wrong with Mark Wahlberg, but, when you have a character as great as Ted, you have to run with that 100%.

Negatives: As I have said before, Mila Kunis rarely impresses me (save Friends with Benefits), and she let me down once again, as Lori Collins, in Ted. I don't know why, but I just don't like her! Lori's boss, Rex (played by Joel McHale), was probably the worst character of the entire film. While I don't usually care for Kunis, I find Joel McHale quite funny, so I was a bit surprised. Finally, Donny, played by Giovanni Ribisi, was an extremely low point plot-wise. Donny shouldn't have been in the film at all, but oh well.

Positives: As expected, Ted (voice by Seth McFarlane) stole the show as far as characters are concerned. He was a brilliant creation, and I wish I was half the genius that McFarlane is. Aside from Ted, there were a couple of other performances that I thought impressive. Patrick Warburton, as Guy, and Sam Jones, as himself, added a great amount of comedic relief to the attempt at a serious plot. However, there weren't that many great characters, further proving the need to focus on Ted.

Conclusion:
I just want to say how excited I was to see billions of people at the movie theater this past weekend. While my expectations for Ted were high, I had no clue that it would make $54 million in its first weekend. Kudos to America for almost making me run out of gas trying to find a parking spot! As far as Ted goes, I wasn't completely impressed. Let's just say that, if I would have run out of gas, it wouldn't have been worth it. The movie was funny, don't get me wrong. It just could have been much, much better. With the great amount of money made, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Ted sequel or a similar production from McFarlane and crew. Maybe they will learn from past mistakes and make up for it the second time through. I give Ted 2.77 out of 5 stars.