Disappointing sequel

Rating: 3/10 (30 June 2009)

Before I point out the shortcomings of this film, I'll explain why I'm giving the film three stars out of ten. I'm giving these stars for the CGI and explosions - that's it. With that aside, every aspect of the movie is awful.

Humor: If I wanted to be entertained with humping animals, cheap sex jokes, and racial stereotypes I would have gone to a comedy film. I'm not offended by crude humor, but it doesn't belong in the beloved Transformers franchise. Campy jokes delivered by some of the auto bots (relating to machinery and metal) while stupid, were funnier than most of the sex jokes.

Drama: I felt no sense of dread when watching the Decepticons; if anything, it was just exciting to watch them kill everyone in their path. Shouldn't the audience feel intimidated by villains in films? When Optimus Prime was killed in the first hour you could already sense the forthcoming cliché of resurrection and retribution that would occur too quickly in the last ten minutes. How pathetic. As far as humans, you couldn't care less about any of them. I was hoping we'd see more from Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel; instead, I was treated to Ramon Rodriguez - the annoying "Leo Spitz". I'm not even going to go into detail about the shallowness of the "love" between our two main protagonists. Whenever they delivered the line, "I love you", I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

Plot: see the hundreds of other reviews. I won't point out the plot holes and weaknesses; they've already been discussed over and over. I'll just agree that the plot was boring and weak. Robot heaven, really? I actually gave the first Transformers (2007) eight stars out of ten. The story, despite its clichés, was actually entertaining. I was able to distinguish the transformers. The sequel recycled the same "find the boy because he has the ____ " formula but fell on its face.

I won't even discuss the racial stereotypes of Skids and Mudflap. The producers could have easily left out the "thug" archetype and made them more interesting and less annoying.