Disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (24 June 2009)

I liked the first Transformers movie. A lot. I saw it four times at the cinema. It tapped into something inside me, the child that used to play with the action figures, and brought the way that felt right out. Revenge Of The Fallen was good, maybe not as good as the first film, but still well worth seeing on the big screen.
The Autobots are now working with the two soldiers from the first film (Josh Dushamel and Tyrese Gibson) in a covert alliance to fight the Decepticons, whilst protecting the general public from knowledge of the robots' existence. Needless to say, giant robots are kinda conspicuous, and on a mission in Shanghai they screw up and a Decepticon is set loose. It's final words: The Fallen will rise again.... Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (Shia Laboef) is going to college and has to leave Bumblebee behind. As he is leaving, he touches part of the Allspark (from the first film) and begins to have visions and write down symbols leading to a source of Energon, which puts the Decepticons hot on his trail.
What I love about this movie is the fighting between the robots. They are much more epic than they were in the first film, and the audience can actually see whats going on. The effects overall seem more polished and clearer, and the Transformers themselves look like they fit into the scenery. We also get to see another world, which looks very nice. With the exception of Star Trek, these are some of the best special effects I have seen this year.
Story-wise, its a little too convoluted. The films comes out at around two and a half hours long, and my god I started to feel it after around one and a half. There are a lot of clever elements, the concept of The Fallen was very good, and the relationships between characters seem a lot better. For example, Megatron and Starscream have a much more venomous relationship with each other than in the first film, which works really well. The human characters are pretty much the same as they were in the first movie, not really that deep, but not blank or vacuous either. The movie has a little bit less heart than the first, the only time I really cared about the characters were when Sam and Bumblebee were on screen together. The Transformers themselves had a degree of charm, but I wasn't feeling it as much as the first movie.
This was written by the same guys who did Star Trek, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, and its really nowhere near as good. Its got a lot of the charm and action it needs but it really overdid the humour. There are way too many jokes, and around 70% of them are really not funny. The film also falls really flat about halfway through. This is not as disappointing as Terminator Salvation by far, but not as mindblowing as Star Trek is. I'd give it a 6 out of 10.