Enjoy the fireworks, 'cause if you take it as a film you can't save it from falling apart.

Rating: 5/10 (28 June 2009)

Well, I am not gonna persuade you out of this, 'cause you'd see it anyway. I'd like to contribute this review to director Mr. Michael Bay, who may or may not have had authority to the final cut. Dear Mr. Bay, if you are reading this, I hope you may finally give us a better revised version. Sincerely.
Firstly, let's review some great qualities provided in the first Transformers. 1, organically entertaining script doesn't fall short of intelligence. The whole story flows smooth as a dream, with lots of lighthearted parts. We had time to develop emotions for Bumblebee and appreciate Optimus Prime and his nobility. Yet the movie had a clear and good message. 2, You know it's made-believe but you still can't believe they brought transformers alive in such details. It became our second nature to gaze and gasp in the whole 140 minutes. One time a robot, and that's the eye candy. 3, The movie never felt too lame to appreciate. Mr. Bay managed to put Jon Voight, Shia Laboef and John Turturro in the same shot, yet everyone still could hold true to their roles and make senses. In short, they don't pretend to be dumb. 4, A lot of chasing sequences definitely added dynamics to the movie, yet it's never confusing, meaning you know who's fighting whom.Every action sequence is long, consistent enough to enjoy.
Now let's see Revenge of the Fallen. 1, the first act worked. Congratulations.Autobots recruited some new members with goofy personalities, good. They help the world getting rid of decepticons, right.Sam's growing up and begin to have problems,wait. The family gigs still had a touch of its precedent. I had absolutely no problems with cheap jokes, but they feel sometimes long, distracting and overdone. The real problem is the lame undertone of its script. When all the fun on the screen get tired, audiences may wake up to find the "Sam going to university" story not a good exploration into the "growing pains" sub-plot.Wait, you are saying there is no such sub-plot? OK, play it your way Mr. Bay. Still, there's better ways to push the story forward to a conclusion that, Sam must rise and shine and save the earth with his punk charm again. I'd like to see Sam got bullied very often and still couldn't walk out of his halo as a big hero, which becomes a big barrier to his maturity. Maybe nowadays kids just can't even appreciate anything bittersweet, not to mention some real LOSS of the protagonist(s). If that's true, I sympathize with you, Mr.Bay.
2, 2nd act. Well, a lot of problems.Sam's college assassination is good;Prime's sacrifice is good. We saw some signals of apocalypse when decepticons arrived and Prime got killed. But the camera just can't drop from Sam and his sidekicks,spending too much time in making it a comedy. Since so much has been invested to create robots, why did you use them to slow down the movie instead of speed it up. In short, terrible pace and inconsistent plot development marred this act. After they arrived in Egypt, I was hoping the climax has some salvage value. My suggestion will be: Bumblebee need more time on the screen for the story to make sense, since many things are left for explanation.
3, the climax. Well simply the climax itself can make a full-length feature, if edited correctly. There are totally 3 plot lines involving all the robots in creation, but none of them had enough time to awe the audiences. We spent too much time listening to jokes and screams when we wanted to see autobots. The idea that US army defend Prime's remains with autobots is cool, but later we saw everything in a flash and couldn't tell who's fighting whom. If all the good guys and bad guys just get blown up so easily like dolls, who cares about them? In the precedent, Bumblebee tried to defend humans by holding up a truck but got his feet blown. That's something solid, which is needed here. This time it's Sam got blown and died for a few minutes until the spirits of Primes decided he's a good leader. That's OK, but it further dragged the movie into a cheap farce. "Everyone has to be happy" seems to be the goal of producers. But if those guys always got revived so easily and jump and kick in seconds, they are no longer flesh and bones. My take on this scene is slightly different: Sam got revived by the dust of "Matrix" but gained a little side effects--synchronizing his mind with the autobot he revives(that's to justify his authority). Therefore he could fight side by side with Prime, making the final battle more intriguing and emotional-involving. Although Prime got reconstructed and empowered, he's still losing in fighting Megatron and the Fallen. Although Sam could barely move after his injury, he acknowledged Prime of the weakness of the Fallen. Those surviving autobots also summed up a little more resistance to help Prime, showing their integrity and solidarity as good guys. After an epic battle, Prime finally defeated the Fallen. Later, Sam's injury needed more time to recover in the hospital, therefore his friends congratulated him for saving the world again and assured him that his growing pain can be overcome with friends and love. The astrology professor came for a visit too after he knows Sam's heroic deeds, and proposed to give him a special section in the hospital as gratitude. However, Sam declined. Later that night, Mikaella asked Sam about the names of the stars(or the fate of the universe), when they are on the balcony of Sam's ward. Mikaella was startled about Sam's profound knowledge in astrology. Sam explained it's Optimus Prime who taught him in their mind connection, and the camera showed Prime on the other side of the earth summoning more autobots. Then the credits rolls.
Well, just my idea. 5/10 means F for failed.