TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)

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"It’s like a three-hour ride on a rickety wooden roller coaster with a burlap sack full of sharp silverware strapped to your head. It hurts. A lot. Yet, it’s oddly enjoyable."

When Anvil sang Metal on Metal, they must have been referring to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. This is the loudest, most obnoxiously jarring collection of images ever strung together in the form of a motion picture. It's an unnecessary blender mix of flying car parts and human screams that only stops moving for the occasional bad joke. Clocking in it at nearly three hours, it feels like a giant slap in the face. Followed by a leather belt whip crack to the nether regions. Its sadomasochistic cinema at its finest. There are going to be those who love it, and those who hate it with every ounce of their being. But know this: There has never been anything quite like it. And only Michael Bay could have produced such an elegant cacophony. It's an ass-blasting. A cobalt symphony of screeching tires manufactured to numb your senses in every way possible. It will burn your eyes. And it will unblock your sinuses. Yeah, it's nothing short of a hell sent miracle.

The story picks up exactly two years after end credits rolled on the first Transformers. The script is a thousand times better, and the movie is bigger in every imaginable way. We are introduced to The Fallen almost immediately (along with Bay's love for jigaboo archetypes). The year is 17,000 B.C. and a group of angry robots arrive on Earth to thrash a tribe of stereotypical tribesmen straight out of a Sambo's menu (for whatever inexplicable reason, there is one white dude thrown in the mix). We see The Fallen in all of his shiny glory, tiny aborigines stuck between his massive metal toes as he strolls through the desert sands. Without warning, we're then shoved into current day Japan, where we learn of an elite U.S. battalion made up of Autobots and army men. They've been sent to keep the world safe from a rogue group of (truly scary) Decepticons who've gone into hiding throughout the world. Right off the bat, Josh Duhamel's Captain Lennox and Tyrese Gibson's Sergeant Epps (the only non-offensive black presence in the whole movie) lead this destructive team in blowing up most of Tokyo. Thousands of civilians are killed, property is destroyed on a Michael Bay level, and none of it seems to matter. Of course it doesn't. This is Japan. Giant Robots and deadly metallic monster attacks are the daily routine.

Along with Ironhide and a tag team of deadly female moto-Transformers that we are never properly introduced to, Bay includes a pair of Stepin Fetchit, jive-talking twins that first appear as a conjoined Ice Cream truck straight out of Fat Albert's Junkyard, then later turns into a couple of fancy smart cars, as part of this new military faction. These horribly offensive caricatures are constantly running their mouths, skirting the bounds of their PG-13 rating. A lot of the script is written this way, with one tiny robot muttering the F word, and the others talking as if they found deleted scenes from Superbad in the trash and decide to devote their lives to the cause. The twins (flirting with racially insensitive and derogatory name slurs such as Mudflap and Skids) are a constant ingredient in this blurred salad. Their bucktoothed, simian slapstick is reminiscent of Jar Jar Binks, and their "hilarious" antics weren't very welcome in a packed house full of anxious African-American teenagers who seemed to pick up on the ruse quite quickly. Its born theocracy, and kids can see right through that. Miraculously, these Showtime at the Apollo rejects do not taint the overall material being offered in these scenes of smudged urgency. Instead, they only add to the constantly humming skin that has been shellacked onto this hulking beast of a movie.

The Original Transformers: The Movie, an animated 1984 tie-in to the toy line and TV show, was a non-stop shower of incomprehensible action sequences constructed solely for the ADD riddled mind. Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen takes that conceit and amps it to the outer reaches of intellectual capacity. There is so much visual information being exported here, its impossible to take it all in without your brain checking itself tt the exit door. You want to look and stare in awe, but the speed with which it moves is likely to rip your soul apart. Huge, glorious set pieces come piled on top of each other like meat in a delicious Dagwood sandwich. And there isn't a lot of serialized downtime.

Strange, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of plot, either (especially considering the bloated run time). A sliver of The Cube (the life force for all living robots) has remained embedded in Sam's raggedy old sweatshirt from the first movie. It falls off when he packs it in a box for college. Before he can get out the door and to his dorm room with mom and dad in tow, the sliver has turned every piece of machinery in the kitchen into a killer robot hell-bent on destroying the entire house. This is pretty astounding, but it doesn't faze the Witwickys. Fire trucks come, fires are put out, and they are all soon on their way. Sam is still going to school, while Mom and Pop are headed to France for a much-needed vacation. Following the old adage: Give the audience more of what it likes, Bay and his three screenwriters have upped Julie White's Judy Witwicky role, giving Shia LaBeouf's on-screen mom a dozen funny lines. White seems to be having a lot of fun, and she saves the first hour from being a pummel horse.

Actually, the first hour is quite an awesome achievement on Bay's part. The pacing is perfect, the sights and sounds are extraordinary. And act one ends with a great robot fight in the woods. Astounding! Following in the footsteps of 1984's Transformers: The Movie, Optimus Prime dies (not really a spoiler, as two more hours revolve around this minor plot point). Then things turn a little dour. Basically, the thin plot gets in the way. Sam and Mikaela (still together and apparently sexually involved though there is never any hint of this on screen, aside from a throw-away line by White) must team up with newcomer Leo and John Turturro's Agent Simmons to find another source of Energon and restore Optimus Prime to his rightful place on the evolutionary robot ladder. All before Megatron and The Fallen blow up the sun. Yes, I just said that.

The middle chunk of the movie is stretched like a crispy, sun baked, black rubber band, and we are taken on a couple of unnecessary detours that could have easily been scissored out. One exceptionally superfluous scene promises a museum full of antique Transformers, but that never really comes to fruition (seriously? WTF Michael Bay? You show us a picture of a Model T Ford but never let us meet it or see it transform? Boo!) It takes another hour before the action picks up again. But once it does, look out. Your sensory perception might overload, and you'll be left with a bleeding nose. To say stuff blows up for forty-minutes straight is an understatement. And I don't think you need to know much more than that.

Ramon Rodriguez as Leo is a nice addition to the cast. It's hard to imagine Jonah Hill in the role (he was the director's first choice), only because of the sheer amount of rigorous exercise this poor kid is forced through. Leo is Sam's college roommate, a conspiracy theorist trying to out scoop his competitors on Transformers live footage. Though, its hard to imagine, in this day and age, how the Government would cover-up giant Robots destroying downtown Los Angeles. Or a skyscraper high tire rolling through Tokyo, destroying its highways and bi-ways with abandoned glee. If it were real, this footage would be plastered all over the world, and we'd be having mild heart attacks on a daily basis. Leo serves as a real vessel into this fantastical world. His reactions to the antics swirling around his head are always realistic, and sometimes we see him just emitting a loud scream. Seriously, wouldn't that be your first response if this shit was happening right in front of you? Yeah, I think it would be.

If you are a fan of the first film, you will enjoy this non-stop ride. If you like watching vehicles morph into giant robots in real-time, this sucker is right up your alley. Despite its offensive jigaboo stereotypes, Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an exceptional improvement in the right direction for this franchise. In fact, after watching it, you may feel you never need to see another movie, of any kind, ever again. Whoop-doo! (Though, riddle me this? Does Shia's hand-bandage appear out of nowhere? Again, WTF?)

(All of B. Alan Orange's reviews are based on the Boo! or Whoop-doo! evaluation system.)