Chris Gore over at Film Threat finally weighed in on the theatrical re-release of The Transformers: The Movie, and I devoured the news the way I devour most things involving Optimus Prime: immediately and without restraint. You can find the review right here on MSN. Fair warning, the link is mostly a video shell, so I'm not going to put words in Gore's mouth about what he liked or didn't. I'm just glad a guy who's been writing about cult cinema since before some of you were born decided this one was worth his time.

Because here's my confession: I don't need a critic to tell me how I feel about this movie. The 1986 film is a strange, gorgeous, occasionally unhinged thing. It kills off beloved characters early and without apology, scores the carnage with Stan Bush's "Dare," and hired Orson Welles, in one of his final roles, to voice a planet that eats other planets. None of that should work, and yet all of it does. The movie's power comes from playing its toy-commercial origins completely straight, like a Greek tragedy with chrome.

And the rough edges are real, I'll cop to that. The pacing is weird. Some of the human characters, the ones I will generously call "the kid and the not-Star Wars guy," drag whenever the robots leave the screen. The soundtrack is a time capsule in the best and worst senses of that phrase. You acknowledge all of it and then keep going anyway, because that's what you do with a movie like this. You don't review The Transformers: The Movie the way you review an awards contender. You meet it where it lives.

The theatrical presentation is worth the trip if you can still catch it. Seeing that opening Unicron sequence on a big screen, with the title card and the synth sting, is one of those moments that reminds you why theaters still matter. Jess Wingo caught a screening with me and spent the whole Stan Bush sequence just watching me watch it, which she claims was more entertaining than the movie. She's wrong, but I respect the observation.

If you grew up with this movie on VHS, worn down from repeat viewings, the big screen is closer to a religious event than a screening. I don't know how else to describe a room full of adults going silent for a character who turns into a truck.

Gore's review is worth your five minutes whether you're a lifelong fan or someone who genuinely wonders why a 40-year-old cartoon about cars punching each other still fills theaters. The answer is the one fans have been giving for years: the toys were never the point. A movie took its audience seriously enough to break its heart, and kids in 1986 weren't ready and neither are we now.

If the re-release is still playing near you, go. Bring tissues and someone who won't judge you when "Touch" hits. And if you've already seen it, Gore's review is a good excuse to sit with the feeling again. That's my plan tonight, minus the theater, plus the 4K disc and a dog who is very tired of the soundtrack.