Not the cookie cutter sequel, which is good.

Rating: 10/10 (26 June 2009)

This is not a total spoiler, but I do divulge some stuff. I started reading all the reviews on here and I became convinced after seeing the movie that most of these people watched a bootleg of it from the premier on their laptop. I went to the local IMAX to see it. I was quite pleased.
Since Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, it seems the standard 'first' sequel has become nothing more than an excuse to make a third movie. Back to the Future, The Matrix, Pirates of the Carabian, and even the real Star Trek movies all did this same thing. With the exception of The Matrix they were all great movies. The good guys are left in a precarious situation AND/OR one of them dies (or is missing or captured) and is brought back in the third film.
I'm sorry to tell you that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen does not do this. Rather than make it's plot stretch for two movies instead of one, they in fact just made it all one movie. They also had a choice to make, will we have these movies start taking themselves too seriously, or make it fun? Thankfully the answer was make them fun, which made them more realistic IMO. They kept making jokes and much of it was fresh humor, not the typical same jokes different movie humor. They are starting a few running gags, which is a good thing, we need those.
By NOT having the movie be a super serious plot about two factions of angry robots killing each other and destroying our planet in the process, they opened the door to give the robots personalities. Apparently some folks think this was a bad thing. The writers have been making it perfectly clear the robots in their movies are not assembly line made robots who are discovering their individuality. They are a DNA based biological technology, so like humans, some are smart, some are dumb, some are naughty, and some are nice.
Some have become crazy and senile. My favorite new character from the new movie was this ancient deceptacon turned auto-bot, I don't remember his name, though. I guess he technically died from old age while pretending to be a blackbird jet and has ended up at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum where Sam brings him back to life with a shard from the cube. He's walking around using his gun as a walker-cane rambling about old war stories and talking about the 'good old days'.
The ending was doing well until it got a bit corny and kiddish at one part. This seems to be a common problem with Hollywood movies these days, and maybe it always was. Did this stupid bit ruin the whole movie? Naw, but it could have gotten 9 stars or even 10 stars from me had they avoided bringing in a 'Super Optimus Prime' to beat the bad guys. Thankfully he returns to normal Optimus Prime at the end of the battle so it's not a permanent screw up. The rest of the ending was good though, so don't fret. I'll probably go and see it in the theater again, like I did the first one.