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Movie Review: ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’
Published by Clay Cane on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 12:00 am.
Summary: A sequel to the 2007 Transformers, a college freshman is caught up in the battle of good robots (Autobots) versus bad robots (Decepticons). The bad robots want to destroy the human race and only the freshman can save the day.
Review: Let’s start with the length — a whopping 147 minutes! Isn’t that reserved for Oscar-worthy films like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — not a popcorn action fluff like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? This movie definitely gets Worst Editing of the Year; a nice hour could’ve been shaved off the epic junkyard film and it would’ve improved the entire film-going experience by 100 percent. By the two hour mark, folks were walking out of the theater.
That’s the first blow with Transformers and while the movie has its redeemable moments, it’s really two movies — one, a horny teen flick and the other a solid action flick. The two conflict, slowly chipping away the good. There is Megan Fox, who is cast as the hot girlfriend. Her opening scene is sitting on a motorcycle with her back arched and ass sticking out — looking like a scene from VH1’s Rock of Love. Shia LaBeouf, who reprises his role, is just a goofy teen who can save the day, which is obviously playing to the senses of their target audience. By the way, Tyrese was great in the film, but his role is more like a cameo — he has no more than 20 minutes screen time. They also had some hip-hop talking twin robots that used bad grammar and words like “punk ass.” Their slang was borderline offensive and they had more screen time than Tyrese. Is this the movie’s way of appealing to the African-American audience? I never knew that robots could shuck n’ jive…
The special effects are probably the flick’s strongest element, but even that at times gets messy. When the robot titans are fighting, you can’t tell who is fighting who. It’s just metal crashing and tumbling, but once you get over the motion sickness the action is exciting enough… and loud. Yes, loud. I felt like I was on a battlefield in Iraq, thinking, “Is this what soldiers in Iraq hear?” I know it’s an odd critique but even a poor child next to me did his best to scream over the movie and cried to his father, “Daddy it’s too loud!” I felt his pain; I needed an Advil as soon as I walked out of the theater.
Plot wise, I only wish Transformers could transform into a good storyline. The script was generic; felt overcrowded when it didn’t need to be and took itself too seriously for 147 minutes — for example, the movie begins in 17,000 B.C.!
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen might perform well at the box office due to the media hype. But, without a doubt, this action sequel is the worst action movie of the year (so far).
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is in theatres today.
I really loved the first transformers movie it was awesome but the second one wasn’t as good for me, I was a little disappointed, some of the things that bothered me, was the story didn’t seem to really make sense it didn’t seem to really connect with the first one, bumblebee’s voice was lost again after he gained it back at the end of the first one, like what was the point of having him lose his voice again, we only got to see rachet like once which I thought was weird cause he’s one of the main characters for the autobots, we weren’t properly introduced to the newcomers they just kinda popped up outta nowhere and you had to guess who they were if you weren’t familiar with tranformers and the newcomers hardly got any screen time, so we didn’t really get to know them, there wasn’t as much transforming either like in the first one, which is one of the coolest things about the movie but we did get to see optimus mobilize for the first time so that was cool, optimus died in the middle of the movie which was kind of a bummer for me considering he’s one of my favorites and tranformers just isn’t a movie without him but he was brought back to life so that was a relief but there’s suppose to be three movies to the series so hopefully the third one has a better story but overall I still enjoyed the movie, the action, special effects and cgi was fantastic just like the first so the movie is still worth going to the movies to see, especially if the action is more important you than the story