It takes 2.5 hours to fit this many cliché's

Rating: 1/10 (23 June 2009)

Let me begin by saying that I really liked the first Transformers film. I knew it was stupid action nonsense, with children's humour and lots of explosions, but something about it just made me let go of my judgements and I loved it. I didn't come into this film expecting that I would love it, I knew it would just be a cash-in on the already popular franchise, but I had no idea how bad it was going to be.
Lets begin with character development. Michael Bay seems to have forgotten this needs to be done for people to identify with or care about characters at all. Most of the new transformers are just thrown into the movie, and it's like you're supposed to know them already. Main characters have lost any 3 dimensional qualities they did have in the first film, and have become walking clichés (Megan Fox's character took a particularly savage beating from the writers). Perhaps the most shameful of all would be the changing of Optimus Prime's character. The cool thing about Optimus is that he was the quiet and rational leader, who could deliver some grade A badassery if needed. In this film, he's reduced to a series of one liners, and constant anger.... I'm not even joking.
The story follows on from the first film (sort of) and a shard of the all-spark left over from the evens of the first movie is being guarded by the army (don't remember there being a shard left at the end of the first movie, but screw continuity). I won't ruin too much of the storyline, but Sam finds a shard of the all-spark in his clothing (highly likely) and the cube's knowledge is transfered to him, making him the Predacon's primary target. Now, I'm no expert on the matter, but machine's, being cold and calculating and all, should be able to complete a task without letting stupidity get in the way, but the Predacons manage to cheat themselves out of victory in a variety of ways, including Megatron failing to kill Sam because he wanted to torture him first. WHY WOULD A ROBOT WANT TO TORTURE SOMEONE RATHER THAN COMPLETE ITS OBJECTIVE?
The only good part of this film were 2 action sequences, other than all the other action was a haze of moving coloured metal and slow motion. Most of the fight scenes were actually hard to watch, because I just couldn't actually tell what was happening. Also, I hate to mention it, because I usually don't care about such things, but the running time is appalling. The film hits 2.5 hours, which would be fine if it had valid content for that time, but it's all just filler. It's pretty much 1.5 hours of army recruitment advertising (Michael Bay has an erection for the military), then some action sequences with some poor comedy thrown in to make up the rest.
Don't see this film. I signed up on this site just to tell you to not see this film. I know you may like pretty colours and moving shapes but seriously, take a step back and realise for a second that you are a functioning human being, you have a brain, and you shouldn't let it be exploited by someone appealing to the lowest common denominator. Try not to fall into that category.