TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)

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"If you are above the age of 8 years old, this movie should have been insulting, not entertaining. "

Let's first start off by saying that I am not a Bay hater, as so many others have become. I have thoroughly enjoyed every one of Michael Bay's films leading up to Transformers 2. I still like Michael Bay.....but this movie is nothing less than complete garbage. It was so bad, in fact, that I would even consider it offensive and insulting to the average person's intelligence above the age of 8 years old, and yet sadly a large majority of audiences are eating it up with enthusiasm.

I loved the first one even though it's story was a little weak, but for any of it's flaws it was easily overshadowed by its charm and "fun as hell" roller-coaster ride of events, mixed together with likable characters and jaw dropping actions scenes that were well paced!

Transformers 2 on the other hand, was a complete train wreck! It emphasized, not only everything that is wrong with American cinema today, but on everything that was terrible in the first one and magnified it by 200 percent! There was absolutely no story, nor was there an actual story structure, it was merely a bunch of random action scenes thrown together in any given order in hopes of making some kind of sense. Nearly all of the new characters, including transformers, sucked and served absolutely no purpose whatsoever in terms of progressing the story! For example, what was the point of the roommate? What was the point of even introducing college considering it was abandoned 1/3 of the way through? What was the point of the girl who was a terminator/transformer? Why can only Prime kill The Fallen?

There are so many poorly written plot holes in this film that it makes me sick......and considering I was going in with the intentions of just enjoying it as a fun, not too serious, "toy" movie, just like the first one, that is really saying something. If I had known the plot would have been something the equivalent of what I could have written in 20 minutes, then I wouldn't have wasted my $10.

The worst thing of all is that this film doesn't even succeed on the level of a good action film. It is battle fatigue at it's maximum! Every good writer and director, including Bay in his other films, knows that in order to keep the audience from getting.....well, essentially bored with action, you need to break up the action scenes into segments. EVERY SINGLE SCENE in this movie had something blowing up or something crazy happening, even when there didn't need to be! By the time the end came around and Optimus Prime "did his thing", it was SO anti-climactic that it was laughable.

But my biggest pet peeve of this film was it's continuous goal of going for the cheap laugh! Time, after time, after time, the writers tried desperately to make THE MOST FEEBLE attempts at humor in the least amusing ways imaginable! And what's worse is that it was childish, schoolyard, clown-like behavior....... And here in lies the true problem of this film..........THE TWINS!

The twins were essentially the Jar Jar Binks of the Transformer world, except it's as though Michael Bay read the script and was like, "you know what, if people thought Jar Jar Binks was bad they haven't got a f#&king clue!" They were annoying, incompetent, stupid, and illiterate......oh and they used dated & crude racial lingo in nearly every scene! So how could we, or at least I, give two shits about what happens to these characters? By the end, I was praying they would get sucked into Devastator's grinders like it was hinted at in the trailer, but of course the writers "Nuked the Fridge" Indiana Jones 4 style and.....

SPOILER ALERT

.....Had them do a double team, spider-man swing, gang bang on the biggest, baddest villain in Transformers history! Who in their f-ing right mind would write something that bad? The two retards suddenly overcome there short comings and, together, combine forces to whoop the bad guy's ass......even though he is nearly invincible and it would take the combined efforts of ALL the other Autobots to even attempt an assault on the Devastator? Give me a break, thats like having Forrest Gump kill Doomday after Superman just got his ass handed to him. It just doesn't work.

Lastly, where the hell were our hero's from the first film.... you know, the one's we actually liked? Aside from Bubblebee, we hardly saw any of the cool Transformers from the first film like Prime, IronHide, and Ratchet, but instead got stuck with the retarded twins and a cranky old bastard who wouldn't stop complaining.

And where were the bikes that I was so eagerly awaiting? We saw them in action for a max of 45 seconds out of a 2 and a half hour movie!!!! The Corvette got screwed out of screen time too! What a waste!

The only two good things about this movie, like all Bay films, is that visually, it looked beautiful. The use of colors, as well as the high contrast look and low shutter angle, which provided for the extreme detail in every explosion, and unique filters made it incredible to look at.

The other was the acting on Shia Labeouf's part. If you take into consideration just how bad the script really was, and realize how convincing Shia's portrayal of the character was, with a few dramatic & emotional moments that were utterly wasted into the pointless story, then you realize the guy deserves a medal for this work on this film!

But for me that is not enough to make a good movie.......or even a decent one. I could go on and on about why this movie sucks so badly, but why bother?

I will, however, say that I think that this is a great testament as to how short the general population's attention spans have become! Like I said earlier, if you are above the age of 8 years old, this movie should have been insulting, not entertaining.

3/10 stars for the visual look (cinematography & lighting), the Forrest Battle, which was the only scene that was remotely worth watching, & for actually succeeding in making me feel dumber.

That's Pathetic.