Michael Bay strikes back

Rating: 4/10 (18 September 2012)

After an original surprisingly lacking Michael Bay's usual crass staples, he produces a sequel brimming with them. This film is the worst excesses of his style, and its biggest strengths rolled into one.
The story in the original film was admittedly slight, but in this sequel it is basically non-existent. Megan Fox has lost any vestiges of character and is here simply playing a brunette barbie doll, but she does look good lying across the frame of a motor bike and we salute Michael Bay for bringing this to our attention, though question whether the 10 year old and youngers who make up the primary audience of this film are as enamoured with a denim clad female buttocks as we are. Shia Lebeouf's character is displaying almost no growth at all from the first film and some of the new support Transformers you will want to see atomised, particularly the ones that accompany Spike in the desert. I do like the idea of the fallen, and the new character Jetfire. Jetfire was in the original TV show, toys and comics, though his back story here, and indeed entire character are so different he might as well be a new creation. Starscream is again wasted, though his attempts to suck up to Megatron are funny.
The nano-bots are well realised and there are a lot of breath taking action sequences, including the desert eating Devastator, but as in the last twenty minutes of the original it is often hard to tell who is who, and some of the characters are such grotesque stereotypes, that there isn't any tension in seeing them in peril anyway.
John Turtorro returns to lend some interest to proceedings. His appearance in the film is like a breath of fresh air. He loses some of his edginess from the original, but is still easily the most interesting human on screen. The ending is a text book anti climax.
Michael Bay is very good with set pieces, special effects and action sequences, but vulgar characterisations and story telling devices also litter his films. When he mixes them all together right, as in the Rock, the results are ridiculously entertaining. When he gets it wrong, as he did here, the results while watchable due to the sheer scale, are disappointing.