Awesomely Bad: Transmorphers

Transmorphers. No, not Transformers. It wasn't a typo. And that's really the whole point. It's what they call a mockbuster. A low budget movie that's only intent is to trade of the name of similar, and much more well known movie. Transmorphers' distributor, The Asylum, have made a fairly successful business on mockbusters. Releasing titles such as The Pirates of Treasure Island, and The Da Vinci Treasure straight to video at approximately the same time as their top-tier counterparts are released in theaters. Whether their aim is to make blatantly bad movies with bottom of the barrel acting class cast outs and special effects that look like they were done as part of a tutorial that came with a freeware 3D package, or if they're just misunderstood auteurs is anyone's guess. Regardless, they are a treasure trove for bad movie lovers, even if most of them are just plain old crap.


I'm going to quote the official synopsis from the movie's website, because after watching it, it's really hard to tell what exactly they intended the plot to be, and what it actually ended up being. Here goes:

"A race of alien robots has conquered the Earth and forced humanity underground. After three hundred years of domination, a small group of humans develop a plan to defeat the mechanical invaders in the ultimate battle between man and machine."

Now what I actually got from watching the movie is this: Earth sends out a satellite with a love letter to a newly discovered planet. The robots of said planet feel slighted for no obvious reason and show up at Earth 5 years later, but no one really seems to notice until it's too late. All of a sudden it's 300 years later and humans, all 12 of them as far as I could tell, live in some underground hideout. There are hints at a broader governing body that is never really explained, but we're supposed to just go along with it whenever they get mentioned. They also allude to bunch of criminals frozen, Demolition Man style, even though I would think a group of renegade human resistance fighters might have better things to divert resources to than a complex cryogenic prison system, but I digress. The only person who can save the humans is a criminal who doesn't really seem to posses any special skills, is the ex-lover of the now lesbian commander of the resistance group, and happens to be the least worst actor of the bunch.

So now we have a thawed out criminal who brings together a mix of ass kicking girls that look like they should be an porn, but aren't - I checked, and goofy pseudo-tough guys who have a mission to capture a robot, reprogram it, and send it back to the mother ship, or mother-skyscraper to be accurate, and act as a Trojan horse. To add depth and complexity, all the members of this crack pot team of experts have some angsty high school relationship with each other that spirals into a few hokey girl fights, some lesbian tension, and an odd scientist/robot love affair. Most of the conversations and arguments take place in a weird hallway that seems to link every part of the underground base to everything else. It looks like it was lifted from one of the earlier episodes of Babylon 5 and filled up with a fog machine. And then they go off to fight poorly animated CG robots who, despite being from a far advanced civilization are clumsy, poor shots, and not very well designed as the resistance seems to be able to take them out pretty easily, even though they're losing the 300 year battle.

So Transmorphers doesn't really have a coherent, believable story. Neither did it's semi-namesake, Transformers, and it raked in over $300 Million domestic. The amazing thing is that director Leigh Scott and The Asylum make a better movie with a reported $250,00 than dud-mesiter Michael Bay did with $150 Million. Transmorphers even reportedly recouped it's production costs in less than three months. Transmorphers has a very endearing quality to it. It's acting class style of line delivery, including lines that seemed to have been filmed but no audio recorded, pulls off more laughs with the same kind of feel than Saturday Night Light or SCTV. The cheap, bargain basement, maybe even literally just a basement, sets and home grown special effects fit the movie better than the overwrought and no more believable CG of it's mainstream big brother Transformers. Now don't get me wrong, the movie is still an absolute turd, but it's the kind of turd that you have to show your friends because it looks like the Loch Ness monster or just smells so bad that you can't suffer alone.

Final Verdict: Transmorphers does everything wrong in the right way. It has a hilariously thin story with so many problems and holes that you will leave you with no shortage of fodder as you yell at the Actors Studio dropouts. The dialogue, even when delivered semi-believably and without slip ups, is about as soap opera dramatic as it gets. And if nothing else, it's still better than Transformers. 4/5 - Plenty of cheese to keep you entertained.