One of the things I love about living in Los Angeles AND being part of the YouTube creator community is that I sometimes get invited to fun and exclusive events. For example, I was invited to attend an early screening of the new movie “Transformers One” at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.

I took my 10-year-old son to the screening this past Friday. We usually have a movie night at home on Fridays, so instead of fighting with his little sister about what movie to watch, his sister got to decide since my son and I were out for a fun movie night of our own!

My son knows a lot more about Transformers than I do, so on the way to Paramount, I asked him to tell me about the main characters and some of the other movies.

When we arrived at Paramount, we drove in the Melrose Gate, and they had our name on the list. Not gonna lie – that makes me feel kinda cool. LOL. As a mom, I don’t get a lot of opportunities to feel cool, so I’ll take what I can get.

We parked our car and check in for the event. We attended a screening of the movie “IF” at Paramount several months ago, but that was on a different part of the lot, just inside the Bronson Gate. I was kind of grateful that this event was in a different location, because it was one of the hottest days of the year, and since we were between buildings, it was nice and shady which really helped!

There were lots of cool photo ops at the event. We didn’t wait in line for the Getty photo ops, but we did wait to take pictures in front of the huge Transformers statues of the main characters in Transformers One – Orion Pax (who becomes Optimus Prime), Elita 1, D-16 (who becomes Megatron) and B-127 (who becomes Bumblebee).

The statues were huge and actual metal. I would love to know where Paramount is going to display them long term. They’re quite impressive, and they looked kind of creepy at night! We went back to take more pictures when we left the screening.

Besides photo ops there were also activities like a gaming station, little cars for younger kids to drive, airbrush tattoos and an “is it cake” guessing game. We guessed correctly, but it was tricky!

There was also a lot of food! I knew there would at least be popcorn, water and soda, but there were also churros, snow cones, cupcakes and two food trucks, one with chicken and one with burgers. We opted for burgers, churros, snow cones and cupcakes. I ended up only taking one bite of my cupcake because it was just too much food!

The event started at 5pm, and the movie started a little after 6pm. We weren’t allowed to bring food in the theater except for our Bumblebee popcorn buckets and the candy they had at the entrance to The Sherry Lansing Theater where the screening was held.

After the movie, we were given swag bags that included a Transformers One t-shirt, a Transformers One pencil case with school supplies inside like pencils, an eraser and a ruler. My son will actually use that every day when he does his homework, but my son’s favorite part was the Transfomers One toy.

He got a Transformers One Optimus Prime vs Megatron Robot Battlers Action Figure Set. He was really excited about it and opened it up on the car ride home. He insisted that we battle it out as soon as we got home, and it was a fun way to end a fun evening.

Seriously, it’s a fun toy. You get Megatron and Optimus Prime with some battle accessories. Not only can the robots battle, but they can also transform. If you want to check it out, you can buy it on Amazon here, but I’m obligated to tell you that as an Amazon associate I may earn from qualifying purchases.

Now to the real reason you’re probably reading this post – the movie review! You can either scroll down to read my review or watch the video below which covers the event at Paramount that I just described, our thoughts about the movie and a battle with the new Transformers One toy. I recommend watching the video AND reading my review below because I point out different plot points and mention different things I noticed in both.

My son and I both loved the movie. I was honestly surprised how much I liked it because I don’t feel like I’m the target audience. I had never seen a Transformers movie or TV show before, and I had never played with Transformers toys before except for the Optimus Prime toy my son got one Christmas.

The first few minutes of the movie, I felt a little lost because there were a lot of new words for me to understand like Energon and Decepticons, but I caught on fairly quickly. I feel like this is a great movie to jump into the Transformers franchise because it is an origin story, so you don’t really need to know a lot about it before going into it.

From a parent’s perspective, there were a couple references that made me think it’s not a good idea to take really little kids to this movie. Early in the movie, there’s a reference to raising the middle finger, and Bumblebee’s nickname for himself is very funny but not something that you would want your kids repeating. Spoiler alert – his nickname is Badassatron, but he says it in such a way that you can’t help but laugh.

There’s also a LOT of fighting in the movie and you see robots die. My 6-year-old daughter would NOT have enjoyed this movie, but it’s not bloody or gory or anything like that because after all they are robots.

My son pointed out that there is no Earth in this movie. The Transformers never make it to Earth. They are on Cybertron for the whole movie. My son was hoping it would end such that you could go straight into watching the movie “Bumblebee” next, but I pointed out that Paramount may be leaving space to create a sequel to this movie if it does well, such as Transformers Two and a Transformers Three.

The movie started with action and was action packed throughout. There was a good balance of action and comic relief (mainly from Bumblebee), plus I really cared about the characters. Spoiler alert – Orion Pax and D-16 were best friends for most of the movie. It’s Orion Pax who pushes to go to the surface and keeps breaking rules to prove that he can do more, but he insists and even tricks D-16 into coming with him.

While D-16 is reluctant to go along for the ride, he ends up becoming the most angry when he learns what’s really going on and what really happened to the Primes. It’s sad seeing a rift form between him and Orion Pax to the point where (spoiler alert) he basically kills Orion Pax. No worries, he rises as Optimus Prime and saves the day, but it’s a really sad moment and the end of their friendship.

Like I said, I think this is a really good movie, but I probably wouldn’t bring kids under 8 to see it. Truly use your own parental guidance. I think it’s going to do really well at the box office, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a “Transformers Two.” My son (the big Transformers fan) and I were both really impressed. It was better than we expected, and as my son said, “I was expecting a lot, and it was way better than I expected.”

Are you planning to see “Transformers One” when it hits theaters? Here in the U.S. that’ll be September 20th.