A great friend of mine grew up in Texas, moved to New York after college, and spent the next fifteen years using his driver's license exclusively to get into bars in the Bowery.
When we came back to the great state for his wedding, he decided to give driving another shot. I allowed him about five minutes before confiscating the keys—my wedding gift to him, his bride, and an entire state of people acclimated to two-way streets.
If there's a single good idea anywhere in Matchbox the Movie, it's inside Jessica Biel's head. Having spent nearly a decade away from film acting, she apparently understands what my buddy didn't: if you haven't piloted a fucking car in years, it's prudent to start with one that fits in the palm of your hand.
Biel gets a pass for easing back into movies with something built at 1:64 scale. Whoever decided to release it at full size fucking doesn’t. As for the rest of the cast, well there's a scene where everyone gets handed walking around money at a casino. So nice of the writers to work their only reason for being here into the screenplay.
Which brings me to a longstanding editorial principle, established approximately twenty seconds into whatever part of this was supposed to pass for exposition: I'm not popping the hood on a movie that never bothered installing an engine. If I'm not telling you what happened, nothing did. All we're here to discuss is what a complete waste of time looks like in Dolby Vision.
That’s not to say that Matchbox can't assemble a scene. It can, and enough money has been thrown at this thing to assemble plenty of them. Its full-send 126-minute runtime is packed with glossy, capably executed, cookie-cutter action sequences that might actually fool you if you weren't watching the whole thing. Walk in 25 minutes late and you could easily mistake it for a decent movie—one whose missing beginning you'd want to go back and catch afterward.
Man, would I pay to watch that kind of thing unfold.
Credit to Michael Bay—well shit, look what this movie has made me say—for choosing a toy line with some actual mythology for his shill-fated Transformers. Autobots. Decepticons. Megan Fox. There was at least something to exploit besides the trademark. Or at least something to cut to.
Transformers came with a story in the box. Matchbox is sure the literal box is its story.
I wish I was kidding.
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