Embarrassingly Bad

Rating: 3/10 (27 June 2011)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Rating: F
WARNING: Review may contain minor spoilers but I promise not to include anything you can't already see in the trailers.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the second live-action movie based on the Hasbro toys. It is directed by Michael Bay and stars Shia LeBeouf and Megan Fox. The story is set (I'm guessing) two years after the original and tells the story of Sam Witwicky going to college, and the Autobots fighting the remaining Decepticons, and a giant alien-baddie who (surprise, surprise) doesn't like humans, and who knows what else.
So first off I want to say that when I saw the first Transformers on Blu-Ray I was impressed at how much I enjoyed a movie based on car action figures, granted I wouldn't say it was one of the greatest movies ever but I was pleasantly surprised and I genuinely enjoyed it. Unfortunately I can't say the same for Revenge of the Fallen. That's not to say I hated the movie, the action was really fun, some of the scenes were really cool, and I was never bored. However as a whole it was poorly crafted, lazily written, and filled with gags that might as well have been written by Middle School Boys.
Now before I get anyone saying "But it's a dumb action movie, that's how it's supposed to be!" Allow me to point out first, that with our recent streak of Smart action movies (i.e. The Dark Knight, Star Trek, Casino Royale) that excuse doesn't hold as much water, and second it is possible to make a "dumb" action movie that is well crafted and doesn't have to resort to immature sex jokes to get a reaction (i.e. Terminator Salvation, Iron Man).
The story of the movie just went where ever it wanted and felt like it had no direction aside from "Hey wouldn't it be cool to have robots fight in China? Yeah! Now let's have them fight in Egypt!" Also the characters were all one-dimensional and had no development, and many acted in ways that contradict the way they had been established in the first movie. For instance: Megatron, the nigh-unstoppable menace from the first movie spent two hours of this movie being the Fallen's lap dog.
The absolute worst thing about this movie was the incessant immature humor. The first film had one scene that, while embarrassing, was forgivable because it only happened once, but this movie couldn't get through ten minutes without including an unnecessary and unfunny sexual or racial gag. And speaking of racial, two characters called "The Twins" were terrible! Imagine Jar Jar Binks times two plus horrible racial stereotypes. I'm normally one to reach for my barf-bag when someone uses the term "politically correct" but these characters felt more like they were designed for Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (look it up on Wikipedia) than a modern action film.
When I found out that this movie had several scenes filmed in the full IMAX aspect ratio my mind instantly went to the amazing IMAX work done with The Dark Knight, so I payed the extra money to see this in IMAX and to my disappointment only one sequence was filmed entirely in IMAX and only two others contained any IMAX footage at all, a huge let down when compared to the extensive IMAX work that Christopher Nolan had done with The Dark Knight. So if you are considering seeing the IMAX version I recommend saving your money (although watching Optimus Prime fight 4 or 5 decepticons solo in the middle of the movie was pretty epic in full IMAX).
This movie was by all means terrible, but it did have a few redeeming qualities. Yes, it was poorly crafted and embarrassing at parts but it was a fun movie to watch and I am glad that I saw it. However I would not go out of my way to watch it again. Let's hope that Michael Bay will take a little more care in making the next film (probably not just looking at the box office scores, but here's hoping).