More of the same.......just a bit longer and more boring.

Rating: 5/10 (24 June 2009)

First off let me say that I went to watch this movie on my own as my girlfriend told me in no uncertain terms that she would not go see it. And boy am I glad she wasn't there. If she had have been I would not have made to the end of the movie. All that kept me in my seat for 2.5 hours was the fact that I paid good money to see it and I hate not getting my money's worth! The slightest encouragement from anybody else to walk out before the end and I would have done so. Now onto the review......
As I sat in my seat watching the trailer for G.I. Joe for what must be the 100th time I realised I remember very little about the first Transformers movie. I remember the first time Sam sees his car transform, the Autobots trying to hide in Sam's back yard, Megan Fox's ass and breasts and Autobots saying things like "My Bad". I honestly couldn't tell you how it ended but I do know the good guys won.
With that in mind my expectations for Transformers 2 were for a fun, brain-dead action movie featuring plenty of gratuitous Megan Fox shots, horrible dialog, lots of explosions and plenty of obnoxiousness from the director, Michael Bay. The result??? It delivers all of that! Well except the fun part. The overlong running time sucks whatever fun there is to be had out of the movie and instead just makes it pretty boring.
What Michael Bay has done with this movie is to take what was good and bad about the first one and basically give you more of it. We some some robots last time, we see loads more this time. We see Sam and Mikaela running from Decepticons in the first movie, you see much more running this time. Last time we had robots peeing and saying "My Bad", this time we have robots crying, farting and even see some swinging robot testicles. I'm not kidding about that last one! Don't even get me started about the new racial stereotype Autobots, dogs humping or Sam's Mom tripping out on hash cakes.
But, look, we all know what you get when you go see a Michael Bay movie. We know he can't direct dialogue, we know he's not big on story, we know he'll put in random bits of crazy that make no sense. The fact is you put up with that to watch some great action sequences! And in the end there is maybe 30 minutes of quiet time in this movie and then a 2 hour action sequence with more robots and explosions than has even been seen. There was so much money thrown at this movie it almost makes me angry that it exists in the current economic climate. Every scene seems to have a special effect in it. Which brings me on to what Bay is all about, action and special effects. How are they? Good, not great, and I'll explain why. There are some fantastic set pieces and crazy robot transformations, fights, etc. I'm sure to those in the SFX business there was some great work done here. It's just hard for me as a moviegoer to care. The robot transformations are not very exciting, we've seen it before. The robot fights were over-long and confusing, it's hard to pick out an Autobot from a Decepticon most of the time. And all of the time the robots looked like a digital effect and never seemed to fit in with the live action background which brought me out of the movie at times. I loved in the first Jurassic Park how there was a mixture between digital effects and practical effects. Sometimes you had to wonder if you were looking at something real or computer generated. Eventually you just accepted what you saw and immersed yourself in the story. It was the same for Benjamin Button, it's hard to know that for 52 minutes Brad Pitt was only a computer generated head. With Transformers you know 100% of the time it's a digital effect. I know there is no getting around that as you can't build working Transformers but Bay could be more subtle with the action so as not to over-saturate the viewer. But that's not his way.
As for the physical action sequences, after the first 100 explosions it's hard to care about the next 500. We also get to see almost every weapon available in modern warfare, planes, tanks, submarines, helicopters, guns, cannons, lasers etc. There's so much of it it really is boring.
The storyline is average, the acting, what little there is of it, is nothing special and most disappointing is the fact that the Autobots seem to take a secondary role to Sam for the entire movie.
So in the end there is nothing really to like about this movie. If you like explosions and computer generated robots than you may enjoy yourself, but after 2.5 hours of it even a Michael Bay enthusiast would have had enough. The only consolation is that 24 hours after you've seen the movie you won't remember most of it and live the rest of your life in blissful ignorance.