Cullen and Welker shine in what is a long and unfocused film

Rating: 4/10 (5 July 2009)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the second movie in the Transformers series and this time the Autobots have formed an alliance with a secret division of the US military to weed out any remaining Decepticons after the destruction of the all spark at the end of the first film, but when Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) discovers a shard of it while moving to college, the race is on to find it and set about an ancient prophecy.
Now, I have to say that Revenge of the Fallen was a big letdown overall; don't get me wrong it was nice to see the return of Frank Welker as Soundwave, who nicely channels Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget, a voice I thought I would never hear on the big screen and I loved Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime and the fight sequence in the forest with Prime taking on Megatron, Starscream and Grindor all at once is wonderful.
But even with all those positives, sadly I can't summon up any enthusiasm for this movie as a whole, as it was far too long by at least 45 minutes, I still wish that Welker had been given his rightful place as the voice of Megatron, there was no real through line to the story as it felt scattered and in the end, all it did was signify sound and fury and special effects and lots of money that ended up not having any heart or emotion to it, as even the movie's best moment comes undone by the end.
As for my final rating, I'm going to give this 2 out of 5 due to the positives above but apart from that, there wasn't much to this movie at all that warrants an immediate ticket purchase and after last year's The Dark Knight, this is a real shame.