Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Review by Jason Donner

 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is Michael Bay completely unhinged and at his most annoying.  It is a grating experience with so much camera shaking and quick pans and action so close to the camera that it is visually painful.  This movie is 45 minutes too long, populated with robots and people who have no real personalities and, compared to the thoroughly enjoyable Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen is like someone throwing syringes filled with liquid nitrogen at your eyeballs.

Picking up two years after the first movie, the friendly Autobots have joined forces with the US Military to root out any remaining Decepticons on the planet.  Optimus Prime is worried that the evil robots are hanging around because they're looking for something on Earth.  The dying spout warnings about "The Fallen" is coming.

Meanwhile, Sam Whitwicky (Shia LaBeouf) has gone off to college leaving his very hot girlfriend, Mikayla (Megan Fox) at home.  Before he leaves, however, Sam accidentally gets part of the Transformers All Spark (that big cube from the first movie) downloaded into his brain and starts seeing symbols and having mental breakdowns which, of course, can only mean that he has the secret location of an alien weapon in his brain that the Decepticon leader, The Fallen, is looking for and that the Autobots and Decepticons are going to be beating each other up to get it.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is like a big-budget round of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots and has every bit the plot and characterization that you would expect from a movie about two plastie robot trying to knock each other's heads off.  Robots are introduced that either get no development and personality while others are introduced who just won't die no matter how much you pray to your respective gods that they would.

Can I just talk about the twins for a moment?  I'm not someone who goes around looking for offense anywhere I can find it so I don't even want to bring up the blatant racial stereotypes that make up this irritating pair but what I do want to talk about is the sheer pests that these two are and how much they are pushed on the audience.  You think Jar Jar was bad?  The twins make Jar Jar look like Hans Solo.  They're awful, awful characters - the equivalent of someone with very long fingernails scraping them up against a blackboard inside your sinuses while farting.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a visually unpleasant experience full of loud noises, terrible characters, and an hour and a half plot stretched needlessly over what seems like two and a half hours.  I'm not one of those critics who has a major beef against Michael Bay or his works, but this movie is just terrible.  The film broke right before it got to the Pyramid scene and I was almost thankful because it gave my eyes and ears a break.

I'm in awe.  Transformers was near perfect.  This movie is near unwatchable.