Lacks traits of its predecessor

Rating: 6/10 (30 December 2012)

The first transformers film had a lot going for it. It's music, action, special effects and acting were all exceptional. But as for this sequel, it seems like the tone of the film needed to be changed. Transformers (2007) had realistic tone, every now and then it would inject some silly humor but that was to let its audience know that there was room for some laughs. But for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), it was decided that more comedy and slapstick was needed. But for what reason?
For the most part, every component was kept relatively the same as the first. Some of the statement is good, while the other part, not so much. What's good are the special effects action and music. The transforming sounds are still there, as are the visuals and the explosive action. Even Steve Jablonsky returned to make a musical soundtrack for the film. What went wrong here was character placement and how that effected the tone.
Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf both reprised their roles as the popular couple, Mikaela and Sam. However, as I mentioned in the first review of this franchise, I would only forgive Mr. Witwicky for being so jittery because it was his first time being around alien robots. What do we have here? Mr. Witwicky is still jittery AND now he's screaming like a woos. Half of the running time in this film Shia LaBeouf is screaming. Even Megan Fox's character screams less than him. Enough with it LaBeouf! Did you ask to have a script with little dialog so you didn't talk much? He should be used to this kind of thing now.
Then there's the character placement of Simmons (John Turturro). Turturro played a supporting character in the first film and now he's been moved to head honcho/plot motivator. Why do that? Some of Turturro's lines are really ridiculous or worse, inappropriate. This was supposed to add to the comical scenes but I didn't find very funny. Plus, writer Ehren Kruger thought it would be fun to pen in some loud- mouthed autobots as well. Yeah they weren't needed either.
I enjoyed more of Mark Ryan's performance as the decrepit decepticon, Jetfire. It reminded me of the senior citizens of our time. For nostalgia purposes. And for the rest of the voice actors, they all return as well. Even Frank Welker is here this time, which was a nice addition. But again, all these good things can't override the abundant silly slapstick that is placed in this film. It needs to be toned down again.
To make the film more attractive, it was thought that by adding more slapstick would increase the films likability. To be honest, it just made it more stupid including LaBeouf's role. The rest is fine though which isn't much.