Words cannot describe the horrors that was witnessed while watching the latest film from Director Michael Bay. Normally, one would expect to see a great summer blockbuster and a great sequel to boot. Unfortunately, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen fails to impress summer movie audience. With its six acts within two plus hours of boring dialogue, the Bay cliche of blow everything to sky high attitude, emotionless characters, and some twin robots that make you do a double take. The film doesn’t make me go WOW! It makes go HOW LOW can you go.
To cut a long story short. The Autobots have spent the last two years working side by side with the US military to track down remaining Decepticon forces that got away after Megatron was killed in the last movie. But an increased number of Decepticon attacks, plus an ominous warning, has Optimous Prime and the military worried about a coming invasion. Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (Shia Lebeouf) is off to college, but he immediately stumbles upon a lost sliver of the ‘AllSpark.’ Contact with the artifact causes a flood of Earth and Cybertron knowledge into his head, once again making Sam a target for the Decepticons.
The writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who rode high and took a huge chance on the Star Trek prequel must have been overworked while writing the script. The dialogue makes you wonder who was this movie actually for. It was filled with Acting 101 monologues in so many scenes. All of the characters were pretty much robots or Vulcans – emotionless. The only sign of emotion we get to see is when Sam’s parents realize that their son has become a man. Even Sam’s girlfriend Makalya (Megan Fox) was only there to be the love interest and to get the all important demographic. It was a shock that no one walked out during the film. The movie was overdone on so many levels.
The highlight of the movie occurs when Optimus Prime takes on the resurrected Megatron and two other Decepticons in a forest. The full, splendid details of the visual effects, and the overall meaning of the fight between this two powerful robots, makes this a wonderful, dynamic sequence. The other action scenes, like the first film, fell flat. The only other good things about this movie were the new General Motor vehicles we see throughout including the fifth generation 2010 Chevrolet Camaro. We must admit that the Camaro was the star of the movie.
The most shocking thing about Revenge of the Fallen revolves around the robots named Skids and Mudflap. The two new bots on the scene help fight the good fight with the Autobots. In addition, they provide a lot of comic relief during the movie. Unfortunately, they are the worst on-screen pair of the Summer Season PERIOD. I thought we have learned from ten years ago with Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace that we did not appreciate a moronic character who is a bumbling clumsy alien who speaks in broken english. The character, you may recall, was Jar Jar Binks. In this film, we get double the trouble for over two hours. Skids and Mudflap are twin autobots that have skimmed the line of racial stereotypes. The pair’s dialogue consist of nothing but urban talk and street slang. One of the two bot also appear to have gold capped teeth. Not only do they fight for the greater good, they constant bicker, fight each other, and tell one another who stupid the other is. Who needs that, honestly? In one particular scene where Sam wanted to two to translate some ancient writing on the wall, One of them stated “Nah, we don’t really do too much reading.” It goes to show that Hollywood can still get away with a disguised taste of negative stereotypes when the rest of the town are very sensitive to the issue.
Was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen just a sequel to make a few bucks and slide into our theatres? I would definitely agree. A summer sequel in our times has very high expectation these days. A writer cannot just put out any movie for the heck of it. They must give the loyal fans who truly follow the series what they want and the moviegoer a journey they will never forget. This movie failed miserably and it will go on my movies to AVOID like the plague. May I suggest that if you want the true Transformers, go buy Transformers : The Complete First Season: 25th Anniversary edition that was released on June 16th. Trust me, its worth more than robot waste of time.
FINAL GRADE: D
EM Review by
Dean Rogers
How can you honestly talk about how unprofessional and messy a movie is when you cannot even proof read your own writing?