It's not clear whether Michael Bay set out to destroy cinema with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen or if it was merely a happy accident.
It's become popular sport to fix Michael Bay in critical crosshairs and fire away. There's no question that Bad Boys and Bad Boys II are terrible, terrible movies. And that The Island and Pearl Harbor are bloated abmominations. But when Bay makes contact, he can hit the ball out of the park. Both The Rock and Armageddon are incredibly successful summer action movies. When these films come on cable, their light diversions with humor and action in equal measure. They're successful in small doses, just not at the 136 (The Rock) and 150 minute (Armageddon) doses they're originally measured in. Break those tablets in half.
When the first Transformers movie came out in 2007, I made the conscious decision that I was going to avoid paying eight bucks for a movie about giant fighting robots and watch it when it came out on DVD. When I finally got around to screening it, my ultimate reaction was to be deeply underwhelmed. It was deeply... all right. After all the critical response, I wasn't surprised that the robots looked like indistinguishable piles of wadded garbage. What I was surprised about was that the movie, despite the title, wasn't about Transformers at all. It seems an odd decision for a director to take up a project that focuses on giant fighting robots when his clear interest has nothing to do with the giant fighting robots.
So what to make of this sequel? If you liked what you got in Transformers, then you'll probably like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. If you were lukewarm about the first film, then there are probably some questions that you want to ask yourself:
Are you interested in the Tranformers themselves? If your answer is yes, then this is not the film for you. Yes, this film has transformers in them, but they're almost always in the background doing something indistinguishable. The robots have no personalities and no features that make them unique. This movie could feature 10 different sentient, alien robots or 50 and I couldn't really argue with you one way or the other. Michael Bay cares not for giant fighting alien robots.
Are you interested in Shia LaBeouf's Sam Witwicky? If so, then welcome to your dream. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is almost exclusively about Sam's adventures. The camera is almost exclusively concerned with him. Why anyone should care about Sam is never made exclusively clear, but he talks to a lot of people. If you're interested in how many hot coeds at Princeton University (and every woman at Princeton is seven hundred times hotter than any Pac 10 or SEC coed) are consumed with getting into Sam's britches, you've found your movie.
Are you interested in movies with plot? Then stay away from this film. Even by standards of summer action flicks, this movie lacks anything that resembles a sensible plot. There are a couple of Maguffins that have to be found for some reason, and there's a lot of running around, but there's not much rhyme or reason to it. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the kind of movie that shows a Kosher deli that features an icebox full of frozen pigs. A Kosher deli!
What Michael Bay is able to do is put together arresting, beautiful images. Any screen capture that you'll see from this film is remarkable. This is true of most of his other films, as well. But Bay doesn't care to use his images for any larger purpose. They don't build toward emotion or meaning. They are a sequence of arresting images without a reason for being. It's difficult to tell whether Bay hates his audience, or merely doesn't really care that they exist.
There's a lot to hate about this movie, whether it's the regressive gender and racial stereotypes, the lack of any kind of logical story, the loud stupidity of it, the crass attempts at humor (why would a giant composite robot need testicles?), the horrifying spectacle of nameless soldiers drowning, or the 150 minute run time. What there is to like is that... well, Megan Fox is easy on the eyes and filmed in the most explotatitve way possible, and there are two or three generally entertaining moments scattered among the intiminable 150 minute run time.
Final Verdict: (Much, much) worse than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but (maybe) better than having your eyes consumed by a swarm of carnivorous termites.
