Bigger, louder, and...pretty awful

Rating: 4/10 (5 July 2015)

If the first Transformers movie was passable, this one comes up short of the low standards set by its predecessor. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN has bigger action setpieces, but at the expense of a coherent script, likable characters and a general reason to give a crap about anything that happens. If all you care about are action sequences with hunks of metal duking it out, you'll be in heaven. I was not. My sole memory of seeing this in theaters was leaving with a headache. While I didn't have the same experience watching it on Blu-ray some five years later, a lot of what is wrong with this film stuck out to me even more. Since the AllSpark from the previous entry is all but destroyed, they had to come up with a new MacGuffin. They came up with Energon and something called the Matrix of Leadership, which is as ill-defined as the AllSpark was, except that there's more pointless backstory and exposition to go with it. Another thing that got more screen-time was Michael Bay's unique sense of "humor." We're treated to two Autobots who are vaguely racist caricatures as well as an abundance of sexual humor that falls flat most of the time. And more exposition. And military porn. And things hitting other things in slo-mo. There is literally nothing to admire about this movie other than some great scenery, landscape shots and (admittedly) jaw-dropping visual effects. This movie is about Transformers, but the most succinct plot description is "Guy finally says 'I love you' to his girlfriend." Pathetic. This movie is pure eye candy, to be sure, but it's the kind that you can break your teeth on if you aren't careful.