Cinema in full perversion

Rating: 2/10 (21 June 2009)

Make no mistake, a great number of people will be entertained by this flick and it offers, well, to say the least, a few aircraft carriers full of special effects for your money. Sadly, that's about everything good there is to say about "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen". Not only was the huge number of negative reviews for this film justified, but the second cinematic installment in the "Transformers" series is really paradigmatic of everything movies should not be.
It all starts with the sub-par acting of Shia LeBeouf, which, by now at least, no longer comes as a surprise. Megan Fox, who plays the admittedly hot Mikaela Banes, doesn't really help either, as her role seems to be limited to bumping into stuff, falling and subsequently finding herself in ready-made bikini model poses, cleavage wide open. The story, if that is what we can call what little is left when we subtract 140 minutes of explosions from the film, is so blatantly drenched in in-ya-face product placement that even the most bullshit-resistant viewers will find it hard to look away.
Now you might say: "Fair enough, but wasn't the first 'Transformers' just the same?". Well, here's where the real problems of "Revenge of the Fallen" start. While the original "Transformers" had some genuinely original, funny and gripping moments, "Revenge of the Fallen" largely lacks these elements. Most of the transforming and warping sidekicks are simply robotic versions of stale clichés, the humor has taken a turn for the worse and hardly any suspense builds up at all. It is this general lack of originality that makes for the new "Transformers" film to be so much less than good and entertaining popcorn cinema.
150 minutes of random stuff blowing up without any real substance to the plot, cliché upon cliché, bad actor upon bad actor, and every so often a pseudo-moralistic lecture given to the audience by some over-sized pile of talking CGI-rubble - I can do without that kind of wisdom! Even just thinking about how many more people are going to watch this movie rather than one of this summer's real cinematic gems, such as Charlie Kaufman's "Synechdoche, New York", makes me a little sick!