There is not More then Meets the Eye... It just is what it is...

So, I saw it.  An act of pure masochistic self torture....  Its impressive how much it can exceed your expectations about how bad its gonna be.  Its impressive how much I could care about  these characters in-spite of the complete dirth of character development, and reductuve nature in which they are written and then I realized its that lack of development that made me care...  I kept wanting the characters to be more than what they were... like helplessly watching a puppy continuously run into an electric fence.

It is so impressively frustrating every time a scene chooses to focus on human characters who are the most uninteresting and pointless characters in the film. Its like going to a football game and being forced to watch spilled beer run down the stairs while the game goes on behind you.

And its too bad, one of the villains is actually a pretty great villain once you ignore the fact that noone understands why hes there... Theres an implication that is supposed to lead to a larger story thread, but it is so vague it fails to make his origins at all intriguing, or the implied breadcrumb mystery alluring...

For us fans and fans of animation voice actor veterans, Peter Cullen has a few great sound bytes... And Frank Welker gets a few brief moments to seethe out a couple good lines... John Goodman and Ken Watanabe are wasted... Characters who are set up to be totally capable and bad ass in one scene are rendered completely idiotic in the next for no reason.  And you know the film is trying to make you worry when they're in trouble cause they say "well... We're in trouble!"

Some of the action sequences are impressive and have some "ooh ahhhs" in between large swaths of just plain confusion... But after a while you just want everyone to stop yelling and talking over one another so you can try to figure out whats going on.  But they're no help, after all, A McGuffin is revealed so late in the film that you dont even have any time to revere or fear it! All of a sudden... its there and suddenly the most important thing.  But its okay its underdeveloped because it softens the blow of the zero payoff it has later on.  It doesnt leave you empty because you're still reeling from the slew of deux ex machinas that basically open up the third act "just 'cause."  Characters make  logic and emotional jumps as if they were tiggers... and the plot switched focus like a Roomba changes direction, slamming in to wall after wall every step of the way...

And yet it manages to somehow sate some deep part of my inner 8-year-old heart, while completely enraging and betraying it all at once.

Sadly, there is not more than meets the eye... it just is what it is...