I have fond memories of playing with Transformers, watching the TV show, and going to the original animated movie.  It's one of the few playthings that I really ever got into as a child.  With news of a Steven Spielberg produced live-action movie, many man-boys (including myself) nearly lost their minds.  Then we found out Micheal Bay was directing.  Then we went to go see it.  Disappointing, the film was nevertheless adequate and entertaining.  Expectations lowered the second time around, I couldn't possibly be disappointed by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Taking place a few years after the first, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is assaulted by a rogue piece of the All Spark which implants directions to a mysterious device left on Earth many millienia ago. In the meantime, Decepticons revive Megatron, Megatron returns to his plotting master in outerspace (the titular The Fallen), and everything comes together in a confusing mess of a plot where Sam and Optimus become the hunted and the Decepticons seek to revive this machine. 

Why?  Because the machine will destroy the Earth, conveniently wiping out all humans, for which The Fallen has a nasty hate-on... which we never come to understand.  To say everything in this plot seems forced, disingenuous, and nonsensical is an understatement. 

Regardless of whether the plot makes any sense, it isn't helped along by any of the maddening choices that Bay makes at every turn.  For starters, why must every single line of spoken dialogue involve screaming and yelling?  There is hardly a moment where Shia isn't fast-talking or every other character isn't in some advanced stage of freaking out.  Secondly, if you thought blatant racial stereotypes featured prominently in the first film, wait until you see the addition of the two jive-talkin' Autobot twins, Skids and Mudflap; they're enough to make Dave Chapel blush.  Many attempts at humour including these two are just plain awful. 

One might argue the film is supposed to be stupid childish fun and one should relax.  Fair enough.  But that argument is completely blown away by the strong language and crass sexual innuendo and other "mature" choices infused in this film.  Skids and Mudflap call human characters "pussies" (actually, that part was pretty funny), dogs are caught on film humping each other, close-ups of anatomically correct robots robo-balls, and the coup-de-grace, a Meghan Fox leg humping mini-Decepticon.  

And by the way - For all you clueless, sexually frustrated, douche-bag, frat-boy types out there, there are more shots of Meghan Fox's assets than you can fit into your memory for later on.  (I can see you tools high-fiving each other right now.)

Then there's the action.  Some of the most confused CG ever, only when the Transformers are standing relatively still do we get to appreciate what's really going on.  Otherwise, it's a mess.  For that matter, who was on the design committee that decided every single Decepticon had to look exactly the same?  Is that Megatron?  Is that Starscream?  Who the @#$! is that?!  An action movie needs to do more than capture really big explosions. 

About the only redeeming quality in the entire film are the capable actors playing Sam's parents, Kevin Dunn and Julie White.  They are the only genuinely funny and endearing aspect of this film that grounds it ever so slightly, but even here Micheal Bay treads dangerously close to whoring them out. 

YAY!- Meghan Fox's boobs.  Kevin Dunn and Julie White who play Shia's parents. 

NAY! - Everything else.

For those of you who REALLY hate reading, or only learned to read numbers: 3/10

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