She wants her My Little Ponies back." This was the complete text of an e-mail I received on Independence Day from one Joshua Hueblur. This bitter and succinct put-down of my manhood arrived in response to my lukewarm review of "Transformers," the Michael Bay-directed action thriller based on Hasbro's line of toy robots.
As a movie critic, I've taken my lumps from various fanboy (and fangirl) contingents out there. Pick a franchise, a filmmaker or a genre - anime, martial arts, Quentin Tarantino, Adam Sandler, whatever - and somewhere there is a rabid collection of fans who will brook no unkind words against the object of their devotion. Sometimes such criticism has its after-effects.
I once referred to Civil War re-enactors as "Trekkies with hardtack" and drew the wrath of this newspaper's (now former) editor, himself a Civil War buff. I'm sure my assignment to our Dugway bureau was purely coincidental. And I am not immune from such feelings, growing up on the original "Star Trek" and devoting much of my teen years to "Star Wars.
" If I hadn't been a fanboy, I never would have developed the interest in movies that put me in this job. What's new to me is the idea that a line of toys, even a cleverly constructed series like the Transformers, would spawn such a following - though I was clued in at the preview screening for "Transformers" when large chunks of the audience cheered wildly as Optimus Prime (the semi-trailer-masquerading leader of the good-guy Autobots) made his appearance about an hour into the movie. Hueblur's devotion seems to know no bounds, as he not only sent me an e-mail, but added a comment to my "Transformers" review online and sent a message to my seldom-used MySpace page.
(Hueblur took note on the MySpace page of my age, 42, and wrote, "That explains it" - doing the math, I guess, that I would have been in college when Transformers first hit U.S. store shelves in 1984.
Never mind that Bay, the movie's director, is also 42.) " 'Transformers' did a good job of bringing my childhood to life," Hueblur wrote in his online comment. "True, it's filled to the brim with hot metal and Red Bulled, amped-up action.
But, that's what we want. You don't need a cadre of action figures in your mother's basement to enjoy this movie - all that is required is a sense of nostalgia and a penchant for watching things blow up. Many of the comments echoed the opinions expressed by Mark Turner Jr.
of Dallas, whose e-mail said in part: " 'Transformers' never pretended to be anything but what it is - a thrill-ride for summer audiences with cool special effects which also just happens to bring an entire generation's favorite heroes back from the dead and updated into today's world. It did that very well and its opening-day record-breaking performance proves that it will be enjoyed and be successful - even when self-important jerks like you try to crap on it." This complaint, which I hear frequently, shows a misunderstanding about my job.
I have to evaluate the whole movie, not what I hope it might be or what other people expect it to be. I have to deliver the only opinion I can be sure of - my own - as honestly and as intelligently as I can manage. If I wanted to mold my opinion to the public's response, I would have entered politics.
If I wanted to predict box-office numbers instead of fairly evaluating the movie I see in front of me, I would have gone into marketing. Do I discount the notion that a toy can transform into a great movie? No, but I'm not counting on it happening, either.
I had an impressive collection of Hot Wheels cars when I was a kid, but I don't know if I would want them spouting dialogue in a movie. She wants her My Little Ponies back.
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