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.

Our Idiot Brother

Expectations:
I personally think that Paul Rudd is a brilliant actor, just not a comedic actor. I don't understand why guys like him and Jason Bateman, for example, waste their talent in comedies. Rudd and Bateman always play the normal guy alongside the stupid, funny guys. When you aren't funny, you shouldn't be in a comedy, period. With that being said, I really thought this might be a role that Rudd would use to break out of his normal guy spell. Any title that contains the word "idiot" certainly has potential to contain one goofy character, and this time it was supposed to be Rudd. I didn't expect too much with the movie, but I missed the movies dearly so I needed something to watch this weekend.

Plot:
In the opening scene, Ned (Paul Rudd) is arrested for selling weed to a police officer, which is certainly an idiotic thing to do. You are then taken to the day he gets out of jail several months later. Then you find out what is going on in one of his sister's lives. Then the next sister. Then the next sister. Then him. Then all of them together. Then one sister. Then one sister. What I'm trying to show is that the plot was way WAY too busy early on. Eventually, each of the sister's lives are influenced by Ned in a negative way. This really was a good way to show how Ned could easily screw things up, but the plot as a whole lacked laughs. Don't get me wrong, there were funny parts, but I just didn't feel like the movie was meant to be funny. It turned out to be more about family, which is a great thing. It just wasn't what I expected.

Characters:
Of course the main character was Ned, but he didn't really have enough of the movie's focus, in my opinion. The sisters, Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), and Liz (Emily Mortimer), really were the focus of the movie. Each sister had her own little plot, which stole from Ned's ability to be the focus of the film. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it does in my head. Ned's biggest problem was that he was too nice, a result of his living at a peaceful, hippy, dope-smoking farm. While he did make dumb decisions and do funny things, I was expecting him to be completely oblivious to the world around him. It turned out that he made the world just a little bit better with his idiocy. He just didn't seem quite dumb enough for me.

Best Character: Billy, played by T.J. Miller (She's Out of My League), was probably the funniest character in the movie. He was one of the guys who lived on the hippy farm where Ned originally lived. I really thought that Rudd's character was going to be more like Miller's. The movie probably would have been better if Billy were the main character rather than Ned.

Worst Character: Jeremy, played by Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation), was the only real mismatch in the plot. As I said, each sister had their own plot, but Jeremy really gave Miranda a second plot as her love interest. He was funny, but I just didn't see why he was necessary.

Conclusion:
I thought that maybe, just maybe, Rudd might be a bit goofier than normal and make this movie funny. While this was not really the case, the movie didn't turn out as bad as you might expect. The story really showed how important family is to everyone, including the idiots. It really made for a nice story, just not the one I was expecting. In my opinion, the movie really should have been called "My Three Idiot Sisters," but I don't get to choose. The cast was very good, and there was only the one out of place character, as mentioned above. Paul Rudd remains unfunny, as I give Our Idiot Brother 2.39 out of 5 stars.