The TRANSFORMERS - THE MOVIE

   Film (1986). Sunbow/Marvel. Dir Nelson Shin. Voices by Orson Welles, Eric Idle et al. Screenplay Ron Friedman. Animation by Toei Animation. 86 mins. Colour.

   This US-produced, Japanese-animated film is a spin-off from the comic-book and tv series of the same name, and all are part of a gigantic marketing operation to sell Transformers: model robots (invented 1984) which, when twisted around a bit, change their shape from humanoid to (usually) cars or spaceships. Most such films are pure exercises incommercial cynicism (MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE [1987]) but TT - TM has a surreal vigour. In AD2005 Earth and other planets are largely populated by good transforming ROBOTS, the Autobots, who are perpetually at odds with bad transforming robots who look much the same, the Decepticons. Since names, voices and shapes are constantly changing, it is almost impossible to follow the story further. The aggressive animation - which unusually for a film is in the style of state-of-the-art COMIC-book illustration (in this case MARVEL-COMICS-derived) - keeps the whole thing swirling along. Welles's last starring role is, appropriately, as a megalomaniac planet.

   PN