Might be good if they snip an hour out

Rating: 3/10 (24 June 2009)

Went to see this with my heavily pregnant wife hoping to take her mind off the aches and pains. Unfortunately, it had quite the opposite effect.
I was a big fan of Transformers in the 80s and 90s. I liked the first movie, though I don't find LeBoeuf particularly watchable. I like some Bay movies (Bad Boys, The Rock, Armegeddon) and hated others (Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys II).
This film was long. Way too long. It's almost 2 1/2 hours that could have easily, easily, been 45-60 minutes shorter. There are so many slow-motion shots of people diving away from explosions, or screaming aloud, or just doing nothing interesting that they could have saved 20 minutes just by taking those out.
Most of the characters are ridiculous, especially LeBoeuf's Sam. He has to be one of the most unlikable main characters to appear in any blockbuster in living memory. The rest of the characters are all stupid, and wait around to have things explained to them that the audience have already guessed.
The fight scenes are almost genius. If you're wondering what 2 giant robots slugging it out looks like, you will get your answers here. The 'choreography' of the fights is much better than the first movie. However, and I'm sure it's been noted before me, it's hard to work out who is fight who amid the noise and blur of steel on steel. In the final battle especially, you can't work out who is an Autobot and who is a Decepticon.
The romance sub-plot is pretty poor, Sam's roommate is another annoying character. John Turturro almost saves the day until he spews out some pretty bad lines.
If you're going to see this in the same frame of mind that you watched Charlies Angels in, then you might enjoy it. I was going just hoping to see a match of the first movie. Sadly, it's not nearly as enjoyable.