Blockbuster Vomit of a sickening variety

Rating: 1/10 (24 October 2009)

Think about this: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen cost hundreds of millions to produce, making back its money and then some. In box-office terms it's the success of the year, reaching 400 million domestically and cracking the top ten highest grossing movies ever. It would appear shallow to consider numbers, but I doubt that Michael Bay or the producers or studio chiefs would mind. At the end of the day, whatever the f*** is up on the screen is probably moot compared to the vast amounts of the almighty dollar made at the expense of a product that can be whatever it wants to be. In this case, what it is is a fiasco of incredible proportions. There's barely a moment I cared about what was going on, who was who, what was fighting what, where the sun (yes, the sun) fit into all of the ballyhoo going on, and frankly, I'm not sure if Bay did entirely either. It's what the "worst-movie-of-the-decade" title is all about.
Oh, I'm sure Bay thought he was making a good movie, probably a HELLA-GOOD movie by the look of things, as he always does. He has a frenetic eye that has, for better or worse, given him the clout to go wherever and do whatever he wants in his films. But for Revenge of the Fallen he goes further with the stakes of incoherent storytelling/film-making and wasted characters and (some) wasted potential. It's hard, or just not really necessary, to talk about the plot of the film, except that a piece of the Aulspark (sic) is at stake in bringing an enemy force of Decepticons to fight Autobots and the Fallen, a real baddie alien-robot, is out to destroy the world and maybe use the sun for something. How did I come to this conclusion after watching the movie? I looked it up online. That's how bad it is to figure out.
But what wasted potential, you might ask? Well, doesn't giant robot battles fused with a plot to use the sun to destroy everything sound like a kick-ass escapist flick? Oh boy, not in Michael Bay's hands it is not. And let's not forget it's not all on him either - the writers, who just this past summer also scribed the new Star Trek picture (perhaps a sign of how crucial a director is in the process of film-making on a massive scale), throw cliché-feces at the audience in a mind-numbing two and a half hours. It's actually an endurance test just to pick out all of the crappy things about the movie, and it all build up, sometimes at astronomical rates. And it's not just Skids and Mudflap being *stoopid* (not racist caricatures so much as part of the cultural f***-all psychology omnipresent), and not just the rampant ludicrous spirit that has no soul or inspiration to it (save, perhaps, for Rainn Wilson as a professor).
No, it's just... EVERYTHING! This is a movie where, despite all of the hard work put in by the crew and all of the hours put in and high-flying action scenes choreographed, its makers seem to have something against its own audience. Everything is amped to 11 - bad sex jokes, bad drug jokes, horrible 'inspirational' dialog scenes, and awful "new" ideas such as Robot Heaven and robot balls - and all put to Bay's trademark camera-work and editing style, propelling a viewer into scenes that have no proper flow or reasoning, and action that cuts away too fast to get engaged or for us to have reason to invest ourselves in the characters fighting.
Even simple things like TIME and PLACE are shot to hell. Take for example two transitions, where our daring-do heroes (i.e. LaBeouf, Fox, Tuturro, Skids/Mudflap, etc) come upon the Smithsonian museum to find some old first-gen Decepticon that's really a jet. They find it and a scene (sort of) happens, then they walk outside and it's... not Washington DC, or is it, since there's a long field and planes. Then, a teleportation happens sending all of the characters to Egypt. Fine, one supposes, until one realizes this is in present time, and day is still day halfway across the world!
It would seem one would try to think things through as simple as the logical geography of where the characters are, or the logic of how fast they might travel (Mikaela going from LA to New York in ten seconds, not just movie time), or about what sense there is in the who's who in the robot battles. But there's very little thought put into logic, because Bay has little interest. One almost has to admire how dumb, loud, annoying, idiotic and poorly (or barely present) acted is all turns out to be, like a burrito in a blender spun to a speed of super-volcano-nausea of all of the clichés and formulas of action spectacles that Bay can think of or just pull out of his ass. One may have a few laughs at some of the things in the film, but if it it is never intentional or pleasant... that is, depending on the viewer. One also has to remember how BIG an audience the film had, and how it did, if only in theory, obtain repeat business. It may also sell quite well on DVD.
But there is a fact that should be acknowledged: no matter who wins in Transformers, we lose, even if people don't realize or want to fess up. The first film was, as I recall thinking, not a horror-show but just a soulless marketing grab-bag for the line of toys. This time is different. Bay goes past the likes of Armageddon and Bad Boys II. He's entered a league of his own in the I-don't-give-a-crap strata of cinema auteurs. It's a mind-boggling vad of cine-vomit you can take or leave. I'd be surprised to meet the one who takes-takes-takes. For realz.