Summer '09 - Blockbuster #7 - "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"

Here's a refrain that anyone who reads my reviews might recognize: this film was okay, but not as good at its predecessor.  If you don't like big, dumb blockbusters, or if you saw "Transformers" and didn't like it, do not see this one.  In fact, I can't recommend it at all.  It kind of blows.  (But not nearly as much as the other critics think.)

First, the good.  Strangely, I really liked Josh Duhamel's military guy in this one.  He seemed kind of flat in the first film, but he's much better here.  That's the main improvement, as far as I can tell.  There's one really amazing battle sequence in the middle of the film where Optimus has to fight off three Decepticons.  That one raised the bar... which the film never seemed to live up to for the balance of the two-and-a-half hour running time.

Basically, Michael Bay decided to multiply everything about this film.  Some of the increases were okay, but most were just annoying.  I liked the fact that there were more robots to follow, but at some point it just got confusing trying to keep track of them.  There're more action sequences, which is great, and they're bigger, which is also great.  But they're also more disjointed and meandering.  He also greatly increased the danger to humanity in this one compared to the first film... but it seemed strangely tacked on and uninvolving.  I'll go into a little more detail about that in the next section, where I'll be spoiling some of the "plot" points.

Some of the character stuff made very little sense to me.  I didn't buy that John Turturro's secret agent would be reduced to running a deli after helping to save the world in the last movie.  I didn't buy that Megan Fox's Mikaela was simultaneously so self-conscious about her relationship with Shia Laboeuf's Sam, and yet was continuously making jokes about breaking up with him.  (And did anyone else think these two should just break up?  This does not seem like a healthy relationship for either one of them.)  I didn't buy that Bumblebee just sort of lost the ability to talk again.  I didn't buy that Jetfire would become a doddering, old robot after only fifty years or so.  I got the impression that these guys have a much longer shelf life than that.

I didn't buy that the Decepticons bothered to kidnap Sam's parents as some sort of psychological game.  In the first film, they just went for it (whatever it was) whenever they wanted something.  Think about that interrogation scene with Barricade when Sam first meets a Decepticon.  "Are you EBay user LadiesMan217!?"  That was great.  No lead up, no playing games.  You have information: give it to me now!  Decepticons don't strike me as very subtle. 

The most annoying plot points dealt with the overly complicated technical details of the story.  Our heroes have to go to Egypt to find an activator device to somehow not activate a giant sun-killing machine that's buried inside a pyramid?  But the activator device will also, somehow, magically resurrect Optimus Prime, which they need to do because only a Prime can kill the Fallen, who wants to kill our sun as retribution for humans helping the other Primes to stop him from... okay, I'm bored just summarizing it.  Way too much story.  Cut-cut-cut.

And as for the resurrections, there were way too many.  Megatron, Optimus and Sam.  I can forgive one per film.  That's the limit.  I would have much preferred if they left Optimus dead, and the heroes had to find some heretofore unknown method for destroying the Fallen.  Telling us how the film will end can be boring, even when it takes forever to get to that ending.

I imagine on a second viewing, some of the story stuff will be less annoying... while some of the technical details (How did they get from the Smithsonian to a desert so fast?!) will be more annoying.

I'm not sorry I saw it, but I can't recommend it to anyone.  Fans of the first film will be disappointed, and anyone who didn't like the first film will really hate it.