Optimus Prime and Shia LeBoeuf in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Dreamworks).

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Michael Bay’s Transformers (2007) made me feel like an old man, screaming at the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn. It’s a movie based on toys? That’s just stupid. What’s next, the big-screen epic The Popeil Pocket Fisherman? And that kid LeBoeuf comes across like a little punk. And what’s with Megan Fox? Is it supposed to be so obvious that she was hired less for her acting skills than for her ability to dress all slutty? Then there was the movie itself: A lot of noise and bright shiny metal. Who knew all that carnage could be boring? Is this what passes for a blockbuster these days? What’s with this generation, anyway? Get a haircut and quit listening to that loud music, you kids!

Ahem. Two years later I’ve become more comfortable with my dislike for Bay’s CGI opus: It’s about him, not me. This epiphany arrives just in time for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which in true Bay fashion manages to be bigger and louder and shinier and dumber than the original. (Michael Bay is not without his skills as a filmmaker, but his natural tendencies toward bombast make him exactly the wrong guy to make sequels, a category of film that leans toward empty excess anyway.) If you loved Transformers, this follow-up might seem like the perfect summer experience. But it’s more like a clip reel for modern special-effects wizards, and for whatever exercise equipment the sex bomb Fox uses to stay so unnaturally curvy. As a movie ... not so much.

It’s two years after the Autobots (good robots) and Decepticons (bad robots) first reared their mechanical heads on Earth, and the good “guys” now work with the U.S. military in hunting and dispatching rogue Decepticons in all sorts of top-secret maneuvers that naturally wind up all over the Internet anyway. Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBoeuf, the aforementioned little punk) is juggling his imminent departure for college with his horndog obsession with Mikaela (Fox), who in turn is flirting with the notion of breaking up with Sam now that their relationship is going bicoastal. (Another reminder that I’m not getting any younger: Sam’s soon-to-be empty-nester parents, played by Kevin Dunn and Julie White, are the most appealing and fun characters in the movie.)

But Decepticons don’t give up that easily. They’re planning some sort of revolution that involves a sliver of metal stuck on Sam’s shirt from the original movie (no, I didn’t make that up) and that will eventually wreck both Sam’s dorm room and the Sphinx in Egypt. In other news, Bumblebee, Sam’s Autobot pal that can morph into a cool yellow Camaro ... can still do that. Also, Optimus Prime, top gun of the Autobots, still doesn’t get that being able to transform itself into the cab of a tractor trailer isn’t really very impressive. And did I mention that Mikaela found some shorter denim cutoffs?

Plot is not an essential element in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. (Fox, in an Entertainment Weekly interview, said “This is not a movie about acting,” and she has probably never been more insightful.) Instead, the film’s narrative exists to push the robots from one scene of gleaming conflict into the next, and to give the humans yet more reasons to run for cover and hide behind things. That puts a lot on the shoulders of the action sequences, which just can’t support the weight. This and the original Transformers owe a lot to old-school Godzilla movies, except the creators of those great Japanese monster flicks rarely worried over how much screen time to give the human actors. Also, you could actually tell the difference between Godzilla and, say, Mothra. In a typical T:ROTF fight scene, I defy anyone to distinguish between virtuous and evil metal – it’s all a mash of shiny, angry chrome.

At two and a half hours, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a kind of masterpiece of Hollywood indulgence. There’s nothing about the film that makes that length appropriate, just as there’s no reason to get worked up over “life and death” fight scenes in which robotic characters can die and then be jump-started back to health a few scenes later. (Because, you know, they’re ROBOTS.) But the first one made money, so there really had to be a second one. Come to think of it, maybe that should have been the tagline on the poster. 2

Erich Van Dussen is managing editor of Rochester Film Journal. Contact him at info@rochesterfilm.com.