Informer

The glossy invitation card read: "No mobile phones. No recording devices. Bag searches will be conducted." All of which proved true.

Inside Cinema 1 at Fox Studios, we were told by a bloke with a mic (let's call him Mike) that the 20-odd minutes of DigiBeta footage we were about to see had been "hand-carried" from the US due to its sensitivity.

What could be special enough that Mike and his colleagues would go to such lengths to safeguard it against unauthorised duplication?

Four scenes from the forthcoming, live-action "Transformers" movie, apparently.

Before I describe them, let the record show that I was never a fan of these rearrangable robots as a kid. I ignored the film, our aerial couldn't pick up the TV station that ran the cartoon* and the toys were prohibitively expensive.

So to the sequences.

In the first, a mysterious helicopter approached an American military base, refused to identify itself or alter its course, then landed. There appeared to be a pilot inside...until we spied a glitch suggesting he was merely a holographic projection. In a flurry of CGI and hydraulic noises, the vehicle changed into a massive, menacing mech. Uncle Sam's boys opened fire - to little effect. The Decepticon(?) proceeded to shoot seven shades outta them with a blue energy weapon.

The second scene was that teen-flick cliche in which the main man and his sidekick crash a party to meet a sexy babe, only to be confronted and humiliated by her jock beau. Said alpha male subsequently offends his girlfriend, prompting her to storm off - and into a contrived situation in which she reluctantly bonds with the lead. The only thing different here was that the nerdy guy's recently acquired ride was the disguised Autobot Bumblebee. In car mode, it could only communicate via the radio, selecting songs appropriate to the changing mood between the couple. This was moderately amusing.

My least favourite sequence was the third, a tedious farce in which the fast-talking protagonist attempted to simultaneously appease his angry parents, remonstrate with the hotty (now his unlikely sidekick a la Ally Sheedy/Matthew Broderick in "War Games"), hunt for a [plot device] and - tricksiest of all - hide three Autobots in his backyard. Cue: trampled flowerbeds, a plucky chihuahua piddling on a robot foot and Optimus Prime(?) remarking, "Sorry, my bad." I was almost glad when a posse of government agents arrived to arrest the hero.

The fourth part of the footage involved a village in Qatar being attacked by a silver, scorpion-shaped baddie (Scorponok?). The only resistance offered was by the Yank soldiers who'd clearly survived the first scene. There was bulk carnage, including a brutal-if-bloodless tail skewering, before the critter appeared to escape by burrowing beneath the sand.

Thus concluded our sneak preview.

While Mike (remember him?) had forewarned us that the visual effects weren't complete, I'd guess most of them were pretty close. Ultimately, though, the picture will triumph or tank on the strength of the Transformers. They were certainly physically imposing and well integrated into the various environments. And yet, when I studied each one in its humanoid form, all I saw was a jumble of shiny parts and not a character with any real appeal.

But that was ever the case.


*I grew up in a seaside hamlet where you needed a monster antenna on the roof of your home to receive "Sydney channels".