Long, loud and irrelevant

Rating: 4/10 (11 October 2011)

The second TRANSFORMERS film turns out to be just as uninteresting as the first film, which will surprise nobody. Michael Bay seems obsessed with making each film 'bigger' than his last, and it feels like REVENGE OF THE FALLEN attempts to cram in twice as much stuff as in the first film. There's military stuff, with soldiers and helicopters, there's globe-trotting adventure stuff, and, of course, there's a great deal of massive robots beating the hell out of each other.
Despite the massive budget and the copious amounts of on-screen destruction, this is a dull film and you feel every minute tick by as you watch it play out. That's because the human story is awful. Mr Devoid-of-charisma himself, Shia LaBeouf, is back and entertaining nobody with his tired 'college kid' schtick: whether he's running away from explosions, screaming like a girl or engaging in supposed comic routines with his extremely irritating mother, he sucks energy from this movie. The supporting cast are also vapid, none more so than blow-up doll lookalike Megan Fox.
Now, as a kid I used to enjoy playing with transformers toys. I admit, the thought of watching massive robots fighting each other does sound fun, in the way the goofy old kaiju movies with Godzilla battling King Kong and the like are still enjoyable even today. I'll admit that the CGI effects in this movie are excellent – you never question the destruction for a second. But even watching transformers fight gets boring, especially when the movie starts with a full blown climatic battle (ever heard of build-up, Bay?), features tons of samey action, and ends with a pitched battle that lasts for around an hour. Too much of the fighting just consists of blurry close-ups, these robots are so big, and I wish Bay had taken more effort to bring his camera back a bit and keep it still for a while. He doesn't, and the film exemplifies all that's wrong with Hollywood blockbusters as a result, even if it is superficially entertaining in places.