What a GREAT ad for the movie! Classic!

Rating: 4/10 (23 July 2009)

Seeing the ads in cinemas for this movie made me keen to see it, despite misgivings...the ads had a great sense of drama and gravitas to them. On this site I gave the original movie 7/10 and called it a good popcorn movie, even though the early part of that movie was really bad and took a while to improve.
Did start hearing bad things from movie reviewers which made me think I should give this movie a miss...but a cinema chain here in Australia had a promotion where I won a discount ticket, so I waited until this movie was off the No Free List category to see it.
So, where does this movie go wrong? Well, at least the original movie had humour going for it...it took a while to get going, after initially being cringe-worthy. The sequel doesn't have any humour worth noting. It's not even cringe-inducing. You just have a blank expression when they try it on.
Worst of all, in an effort, perhaps, to compensate for the mechanical characters' lack of charisma and empathy, the movie goes down the awful George Lucas route, creating a couple of mechanical characters (known as "Don't Know" and "Don't Care"...just kidding on that, although I really don't know these characters' names) modelled on Jar Jar Binks...loosely based on racial and ethnic stereotypes in the human world. Not being American, I can't say that I really find their brand of American jive-talk very entertaining at all. It's really awful...small boys may like their humour and machismo though.
What is watching this movie like? Well, it's like spending around two and a half hours with drunk, spaced out, self-obsessed teenagers talking about EVERYTHING...or, watching small boys play in a sandpit with Transformers toys, and listening to their running commentary-for two and half hours-...or watching teenage boys playing the new Transformers video game...for TWO AND A HALF HOURS!!!
Sure, there is LOTS of action in this movie. But to tell you the truth, this series ends here for me. Enough is enough. Director Michael Bay would really have only one way to 'improve' on this movie next time round...two and a half hours of a single Transformers chase where pretty much everything en route gets destroyed. Even if he did this, I wouldn't watch it...because this is just one big, stupid, action packed movie. The destruction wreaked in the first movie was entertaining. And the ads for the sequel seemed even more exciting, in this regard. But it just doesn't impress as much when married into this tedious movie.
Like the first movie, the film makers either seem to not know who they are pitching this movie at, or, more likely, perhaps, they are trying to appeal to all ages, which makes some of the material in this movie inappropriate to young children (there is much leering camera work in this movie of young bodies etc).
With regards to the sexual aspects to this movie, I must say I have been misinformed...seeing girlie calenders in motor mechanic garages, I always thought that the scantily dressed beautiful young women draped over motorcycles were being sexually exploited...turns out they were putting artwork on the bikes instead! Megan Fox's character demonstrates this early on...and you get a nice, leering shot up her shorts...think you see panty too.
In other words, this is about two and a half hours of things blowing up (for small boys) and titillation (for teenage boys).
Do yourself a favour-record the ad for this movie when it plays on TV. And when you think you want to watch the movie, watch the ad instead. It's really good!
Three words: T.D.S.