Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen --- review!!!

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Dir: Michael Bay

Stars: Shia Lebouf, Megan Fox

1st admission:  I hate Michael Bay.  He’s a Hollywood hack --- great at making big actions scenes work, which is cool, but terrible at finding the balance of action and story. 

2nd admission:  I really enjoyed the first Transformers movie.  Yes, it was the same big action of a summer popcorn movie, but it had a story, fun characters, a sense of humour, and best of all, it moved along quickly.  The only truly good Michael Bay movie.

I had heard Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was getting bad reviews, but I had no idea how bad it could really be.  This movie is a real mess.

For starters its, like, 2 and a half hours long.  You could have easily cut an hour out of this movie.  The action isn’t handled well --- half of it is over-elaborate scenes of things transforming.  I get it.  They transform.  I don’t need to spend a half hour watching it happen from different angles with spinning cameras throwing me into a seizure.  The rest of the action is loud and incomprehensible.  You just hear metal clashing and see metal clashing --- you can’t tell what’s going on.

They tried to recreate the fun characters from the first movie, but it comes off as pure hijinx.  There are a ton of scenes that don’t move the plot forward and are just excuses for jackassery.  “Oh man!  First these killer robots are after us and now Mom ate some pot brownies!  Bummer!”  As individual scenes, there’s nothing really wrong with them, but spliced together, it’s an hour of scenes where characters are hamming it up and it stalls the motion of the movie.  I never felt more restless. 

Megan Fox --- a pretty lady, to be sure.  So why do they cover her in chicken grease?  She wants to be taken seriously as an actress, but her scenes are just excuses to have her bend over a motorcycle while slathered in baby oil.  It’s not helping her complexion.  It probably sounds mean, but I can’t wait for her star to fade, leaving her to appear in straight to video sci-fi movies.

The first movie had a cast of Transformers that they focused on, but in this sequel, there are hundreds of robots doing hundreds of things all in one confusing palate.  And who is this new top bad guy (basically a rip off of the Emperor from Star Wars)?  He actually had the line, “vengeance is mine.”  I threw up in my mouth a little when he said that.  Bad dialogue gives me hives.

Notice there’s no synopsis at the top of this review --- it’s because I’d be hard pressed to even tell you what this idiotic movie was about. 

1 Dork out of 5 on the Geek-o-Meter.  It’s too bad that Michael Bay uses his considerable technical talents for evil.