Michael Bay has done it again: and "it" is garbage.

Rating: 3/10 (24 June 2009)

I'll say this right off the bat: I didn't like the first film. I thought it was mostly dull, made little sense, and mostly just an excuse to have chunks of metal thrown at each other. However, after watching this sequel, I almost want to watch the original again just to get the bad taste of out my mouth.
This movie, really, deserves only 1 star. The story is beyond clichÃ©d (bad guys want to destroy the universe). The dialogue is terrible, always trying to be funny or cute but always at the wrong time. The acting is sub-par, although I can't blame Shia LaBouef for taking a job in a money-maker like this. Many of the elements of this film sound like a 6 year old wrote it off the top of their head: for example, at one point for no apparent reason, the entire crew of protagonists just teleport to the middle of a desert. No warning. Nothing ever referred back to it. They just teleport. I laughed out loud.
Another major problem is the blatant humorless racism that is prevalent throughout the entire movie. The characters travel around the world, giving the writers and Michael Bay a chance to throw out every ridiculous stereotype that they can: French people eating snails, Black people with golden teeth, Arabic people who are short and envy Americans (Is that even a stereotype? It sure appeared as one). I usually don't mind racial humor, but frankly, this isn't humor, this is just ignorant bigotry.
I'm giving the film 3 stars because, honestly, it looks very good. The action scenes, few there are, are directing a bit better than the prequel, so I could enjoy them a bit more. Granted, it is often hard to tell which transformers are the Autobots (good guys) and which are the Decepticons (evil guys), but it is satisfying just to see action considering how boring and senseless most of the rest of the movie is. The visual effects are very good, albeit again sometimes hard to distinguish. The production value is very summer-movie-esquire.
If you want to see a fun summer movie, go see Star Trek again. Go watch Terminator Salvation, which maybe wasn't perfect, but is far better than this. If you are a major Transformers fan, I personally am not, I would wait and rent it. Even if you liked the first one, I have serious doubts that this movie will satisfy you. There are plenty of things that added to the atrocity of this film (robots with testicles, robots that can turn into people, inconsistency with language, plot holes), but I'll try to keep this shorter than the two-and-a-half hours I just spent watching this garbage. It really appears as a film made by six year olds, for six year olds, yet six year olds who think racism and bad sexual references are hilarious. Avoid this one, I say.