The cacophony of nothingness.

Rating: Null/10 (7 July 2009)

When watching a movie such as Transformers 2, it is undoubtedly hard not to be bedazzled by all the glitter that flies at you every fifteen minutes. Whether it's the pristine CGI work that glistens with a glisten only glistening diamonds could pay for, or the high-name actors, director, writers and just about everything else involved in a production bigger and grander than your wildest imagination—well, sort of. You see, despite the fact that a single cluster of pixels within a single frame of Rise of the Fallen's two and a half hour tour de force of computer generated action, explosion and all abound balls to the wall ruckus fest is probably worth more than the car you drove to see the thing—despite this overarching sense of Hollywood spectacle, glamour and Event phenomena that so often surrounds major productions such as this, the overall effect is akin to finding a very large pastry that has taken the form of a succulent meat pie... without the meat.
Yet following in the footsteps of an original feature that just about stunk to the high heavens in spite of its major budget and fancy effects, even the most optimistic of primes wouldn't be at fault for suspecting foul play at hand here. Even more unsurprising however is that Transformers 2 isn't by any means an improvement on its predecessor; sure enough, it makes everything bigger, blows more stuff up and achieves being a landmark in terms of cinematic effects, but is it any good? No, it's not. Following on almost directly from the previous feature, this follow up reintroduces the familiar faces of Optimus Prime, Megatron and Sam Witwicky and brings a few more into the game just to "freshen" things up a little. The story, which takes about the length of a regular film to actually get moving, is slow, plodding and completely uninvolving. As usual, the basic threat is that the evil robots want to destroy the Earth and humanity along with it, and all the humans, good robots with senses of humour and a Kid With A Destiny attempt to kick all those party pooper robots back to where they came from. Ho-hum, right? Well yes, but then again a lot of action blockbusters take on the same basic premise and make it work. So what makes Transformers 2 the flat pancake of ideas that it is? Simple; there are no real characters here, the plot takes far too long to develop beyond anything rudimentary, and the special effects—although dazzling—take up far too much screen time away from those characters and story-lines that we should be paying attention to.
As much as I like to play the characterisation horn however, there remains the question of how, if even possible, these men and women that occupy an adventure story so grand as Rise of the Fallen could ever truly steal the screen away from those fancy pixels. Well, the answer lies not too far away with writers Orci and Kurtzman's earlier blockbuster hit of the summer, Star Trek. Although far from perfect, Trek was an example of action done at the whim of character and plot rather than the other way around. Sure, it might not be quite as dazzling as Bay's outing here, yet Abrams also stood on firm ground by revolving his tension and climaxes around character conflict and tangible action. With Transformers there's an unsettling amount of irreverent inconsequence inherent to its lack of will; the pieces on the board move around on their own, change shape and have it out with each other, and yet there is little emotion or thrill to all the gun fights and flying shards of scrap metal. The characters—if you can even call them such—are just as useless.
Yet it could be argued that each franchise stands on its own separate ground. With Transformers you have Bay and Megan Fox and in Star Trek you have Kirk and Abrams. When Fox struggles most of the movie to make more of an impression than her CGI backgrounds (and rather ironically too often looks even less realistic than most of them thanks to her excessive makeup fit for a circus clown) and the many feigned attempts at romance between her and co-star LaBeouf feel overly stilted and blasé, it isn't hard to see that the very palette that the film-makers have to work with here is very different. But then again, Fox in a way perfectly embodies the movie perfectly—nice to look at sure, as long as you avoid the suntanned puffer fish clown face and the whole, personality thing that's missing underneath. When it comes down to it, Rise of the Fallen is certainly this year's biggest movie, but it's also one of the most disappointingly trivial. Between expansive fight scenes and wise-cracking robots, the landscape portrayed by mega-star director Michael Bay here is lifeless and completely uninteresting. Those who crave nothing more than CGI robot kung-fu will lap this popcorn-fest up with vigour while the rest of us will simply have to sit back and try to ignore all that cash going down the proverbial drain. Yet that is, surprisingly, Transformers 2's biggest success—the comedy. Again, Orci and Kurtzman provide an amusing amount of comedic relief for audiences to breathe within throughout, giving the movie lighter, much more engaging side. Yet even so, the biggest pun here unfortunately is the cacophony of nothingness that is Rise of the Fallen with its endlessly pointless and forgettable drivel that permeates this multi-million polygonal excuse for a movie.

A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)