Never has a movie that has fulfilled all of its promises dissapointed me. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is the first. Director Michael Bay has actually managed to make a movie completely devoid of brains. Its not as if I was expecting to see story on the level of The Godfather nor have I made the mistake of believing that Bay is anything more than a special effects addict with a camera but this movie in all of it's loudness, profanity, and crude humor really feels slapped together. Yet, oddly, is this not what we asked for? We get more and bigger robots, more deafening and bone crunching battles, and more eye candy in the form of Megan Fox and Alison Lucas. Seems likes a match made in heaven right? So why is it that this entire movie plays like the last 30 minutes of Bay's 2003 brain cell-frying Bad Boys II? The answer begins with the downright horrible script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman who rather than providing plot and exposition seem to pepper together scenes bookended with jokes that push the envelope of the film's PG-13 rating (its like a Family Guy episode where endless cut scenes impede the story from ever being told). This is a surprise especially considering that the screenwriters penned the first Transformers as well the summer's first hit Star Trek. Bay's execution only serves to lumber the movie along until we get to a point I like to call "too much piff". Similar to the X-Men movies, this movie has simply too many good guys and bad guys for me to care about who wins or loses and between the return of Megatron (who for some reason wasn't renamed Galvatron) and the brief and non-sensical introduction of The Fallen I begin to wonder if the script writers even consulted the first movie because plot holes abound. Not to mention that at 150 minutes the movie is overly long and (I never thought I would say this) but I can only watch two robots beat the living hell out of each other so much.
I find no fault with the effects which are better than ever. The acting is as good as it can be considering what the actors have to work with and the voice talents of Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving (as Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively) is still top notch. The basic plot, in which the Decepticons hunt for the remaining peices of the All Spark in order to bring about the nefarious plan of their leader (known as The Fallen) was good enough to stand on it's own without the Sam goes to college thread. A storyline that only served to provide Terminator-esque sequences with a Decepticon posing as a human.
Overall, be careful what you wish for because you'll fuck around and get it. What sucks about this overly long visual effect demonstration is the realization that this is what we clamored for after the success of the first Transformers.
Final Verdict: 7.5 out of 10
Go for the effects but don't expect to feel great about this movie
Note: Not to label myself a prude or anything but I would hesitate to take a child under the age of 13 to this movie. The language (particularly from the "good guy" Autobots) is surprisingly strong and the sexual innuendos are going to be tough to explain to kid.
And on a final topic, there is growing controversy about the so-called ingrained racism in the movie in regards to slang talking illiterate Autobot twins Skidz and Mudflaps. All I have to say to that is GET A FUCKING LIFE. If your racial self esteem is so low that you indentify the antics of two robots as your own or as those of your people then I feel sorry for you.
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