Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen shares a lot of the same positives and negatives of the first movie. It’s an overblown and overlong action spectacle that pulverizes the audience into submission, while somehow managing to be a decent and entertaining motion picture. Michael Bay’s brand of slo-mo mayhem looks amazing on the IMAX screen and the movie is often overwhelming and exciting, till the last 30 minutes when it just becomes exhausting. The novelty of the first movie is no more and Bay realizes this, giving fans exactly what they want. More robots smashing into each other like super-size rock-em sock-em robot toys. The human stars again barely matter (as I said in my review of the first movie, no one goes to see Shia or Tyrese bring the rain); it’s the robots and excellent effects of ILM that save the day.

The plot begins with Sam (a likable Shia Lebeouf) going off to college to try and live a normal life, which lasts all of like 10 minutes. The Autobots are working together with our military to hunt down Decepticons and prevent them from destroying our world. Meanwhile Sam is having girlfriend problems with Megan Fox (still hot, still don’t know if she can act and don’t care one way or the other) and between a nasty female Decepticon pursuing him (a nasty and amusing nod to Species) and ancient symbols driving him nuts, he’s having a rough go of it. The movie’s first act ends with an amazing battle in the forest that makes up for a lot of the dumb (if sometimes funny) humor. Sam goes on a quest to save Optimus Prime that winds up in Egypt with a giant smackdown. Bay keeps his right wing fantasies under control till near the end when the military suddenly starts kicking butt, but that is a minor annoyance. For the most part, Tyrese and his military crew are on the sidelines staring pensively until the last 30 minutes or so, a good decision from Bay.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a mixed, but enjoyable movie. With nods to the Transformers animated movie, and some funny bickering with Megatron and Starscream, fans of the original animated G1 series will find things to enjoy about the movie while casual fans will enjoy the action and effects. I think that this movie is as underrated as much as the first movie is overrated.

Grade: B

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