Listen, let's keep this short: is Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen a good movie? No, not a chance. Is it a good robot movie? Well, it was better than Robot Jox, but worse than Robocop. But hey, not everybody really needs a good movie to have a good time at the movies. If you're the kind of person whose idea of a good time is to hang out downtown and watch construction vehicles tear down a building, imagine the fun you'd have if the vehicles could turn into robots, spout ridiculous dialog, and fire zappo weapons at each other! And of course, Megan Fox is involved in there somehow, but that's too easy. I could tell your average young male moviegoer that Megan Fox runs around in tight shorts and a low cut top in the remake of "My Dinner with Andre", and he'd be sold.
I won't bother with the plot, because I didn't understand a word of it. I didn't really understand anything I saw in this movie, to be honest. Things blow up, mostly in slow motion. People run around breathlessly explaining the plot to each other, but somehow I didn't catch on. Things transform, usually in high speed and zoomed-in so much that for all you know you're watching the innards of a Norelco razor. And for me, that was also the great tragedy of 2007's previous entry in the franchise. See, I never watched the show. Sure, I run a big hairy site dedicated to the toys, but to me, the toys themselves are the point. I don't have any attachment to the narrative of the mythology. I don't know why the Autobots hate the Decepticons. I don't know what Starscream has up his butt. For me, the toys are fun, and that's enough. So when someone comes along and makes what feels like a 9-hour movie about these overgrown gizmos, why, oh why don't we ever get a good, long look at one really transforming? Bay has apparently decided that there are 3 simple rules that must always be obeyed when photographing a transforming robot: 1) Do it at full speed or faster! 2) Zoom way in so we can see how many tiny little pieces are involved! 3) Fly the camera around in a circle, Braveheart-style, so you see a little bit of everything without ever getting a good look at the whole!
But maybe it's for the best. There are only a few robots that don't feel like a cheat, and would thus stand up to close scrutiny--Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, the big green one, and--well, that's about it. The rest are just glittery grey and brown mush. When robots like Starscream and Megatron "transform" they merely dissolve into so many tiny little pieces that they may as well be made up of steel gauze. Want to dress up like Megatron for Halloween, kids? It's easy, just put on a black leotard, smash a disco ball to bits, then cover yourself in glue and roll around in the pieces!
Okay, back to the movie. A lot of reviewers like to remark that the robots upstage the actors. I disagree. I feel that John Turturro upstages the robots, which is more impressive. He's a little more shrill and all-over-the-place in this one, but still he gets the movie's only funny line (you'll know it when you hear it). The rest of the fleshies are a predictable arrangement of would-be comic relief (the parents, although I found them annoying), more comic relief (the roommate, who to his credit, is the only one who seems to display the proper reaction to what's going on, gibbering in terror in the backseat of Bumblebee as they tear along a desert road dodging aircraft fire), eye candy (Megan Fox), and pie-faced American soldier types who have decided that they'd rather take orders from Shia LeBouef than from their clueless, stodgy, boring old superiors.
So, as a movie, this is terrible, but as a demolition derby, it succeeds well enough. Enjoy as best you can, but if you want to get a good look at a transforming robot, you'll do better rummaging through the collection on your dresser top.
