It's already become passe to make fun of the Transformers movie, which somehow deserves both all the praise and every piece of scorn that gets heaped on it. Amidst the two and a half hours of amazingly cool footage of robots beating the tar out of each other, there was almost no plot, no character development, and some truly laughable storytelling elements. But while people have picked on virtually every discernible element in the movie, they've missed one of the key points that utterly destroyed whatever hope this movie had of remaining watchable throughout its gigantic runtime: the gross miscasting of Ramon Rodriguez.
Now, Rodriguez is not necessarily a bad actor, but he was cast in a role that required him to:
1. Be a computer nerd.
2. Have a funny alpha-male rivalry with non-alpha-male Shia LeBeouf.
3. Strike out with every girl he came to.
4. Have lots of throwaway "I'm so pathetic!" lines.
5. Panic and fake-cry throughout all the action.
6. Finally grow some balls right at the end, to the surprise of the viewer.
You know who you cast for a role like that? Someone who can play a geeky loser. Somebody short, or fat, who has bad hair or big glasses. Somebody who we root for even as they screw things up for everyone.
Someone like Jonah Hill, who they offered the role to and who turned it down. Someone who's a Jonah Hill type, a schlubby guy the audience feels a connection with and can laugh at.
Definitely not this guy:
No offense to Mr. Ramirez, who seems to be a fine actor, but he's a guy who's best known for his role in "The Wire," a show about life in the projects of Baltimore without a whole lot of slapstick comedy. So here's a list people who could've played that role better than Ramon Rodriguez without blinking an eye:
1.Jonah HillAnd really, Michael Bay, you'll spend 16 months on post-production effects of cars turning into robots, but when one geeky actor turns you down, you decide to just ditch the whole casting call and hire whoever you feel like? At least with Megan Fox, there's a legitimate excuse there. Here, there's none.
2. Josh Gad
3. Jay Baruchal
4. Justin Long
5. Michael Cera
6. Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Also, when Shia Lebeouf dies and travels to the Land Of The Primes, that was the stupidest thing I think I'd ever seen.