A heart-breaking disappointment

Rating: 5/10 (29 June 2009)

The first Transformers completely amazed me, not only by the special effects, but also because the story was surprisingly good and the characters were very likable. So when a second Transformers was announced, following the Hollywood tradition of exploiting every decent movie with a bunch a sequels, I couldn't wait to watch it. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen followed yet another Hollywood tradition, being a very bad sequel.
The story begins with Sam moving away for College, leaving both his beautiful girlfriend Mikaela (hoping for a good long-distance relationship when he cannot even say he loves her) and his robot protector Bumblebee behind and with Optimus Prime and the rest of the gang joining forces with the military on a 'secret' operation to exterminate any remaining Decepticons on Earth (and just how secret an operation be when on the first 10 minutes of the movie half the city of Shanghai is destroyed?). And then it goes on from there with Sam becoming the only key to finding yet another alien machine left on Earth so very long ago and then to the revival of Megatron to his pursuit of Sam through half the world. Sounds familiar? Well, it should. But I was willing to look past the clichÃ©d beginning of the plot in exchange for a better development on the story. It never came.
I left the theater very disappointed. I tried very hard to like it, ignoring the irregularities on the plot, the annoying characters and the too many humping and testicles jokes. But by half way through the movie, I realized that no matter how much I waited, the movie just wasn't going to get better. Fans of the Transformers series will be more than pleased to see references to the show as in the Matrix and other characters like Devastator and Jetfire (even when they weren't necessarily portrayed in the same way as in the series) and even as to how Starscream was finally shown in the movie as the coward he is. But despite all this, the film simply does not deliver.
A highlight of the movie should've been the introduction of new Transformers. Keyword: should've. We were stuck through the whole movie with a pair of "twins" that not only were offensively stereotyped, but also contributed with absolutely nothing to the movie. And to prove just how worthless these two really were, first, none of the other characters (either humans or robots) gave them any attention whatsoever and on one scene near the end they are supposedly fighting against Devastator and on the next one, Devastator is making his way to the Pyramid where the sun-destructing-machine-that-makes-Energon is hidden without any of the damage the brothers had made on the previous scene and the twins themselves are not shown or mentioned for the rest of the movie. New human characters? Also, very irritating. The blonde and hot new 'love interest' that turned out to be a Decepticon was, in my opinion, a very stupid addition to the plot. Why would the Decepticons send one of their own disguised as a girl to attend college parties and classes only to seduce Sam when their objective is to capture him, get the info and then kill him? On one scene, the girl simply walks away when Bumblebee (in Camaro form) throws oil at her face when she is alone with Sam. The extending tongue thing she did every on every single shot was also stupid and unnecessary. And speaking of unnecessary, the latino boy added to the 'heroic team' of Sam, Mikaela and Simmons, turned out to be an incredible waste of film that otherwise could've been occupied by other characters that actually contributed something to the film and had very little role in this movie like those played by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson. But when it comes to characters who had more time on-screen than they deserved, it is Sam's parents the ones who take the title. Mom's craziness was sort of funny on the first movie and the first 30 seconds in this movie were sort of okay, but when the Marihuana scene extended like for 5 minutes I seriously wanted a Decepticon to come a blow her head off. And not only with her. It seemed like every scene that involved one character doing something 'funny' (under the screenwriter's standards) went on and on and on. Like Simmons's 'Remember what this man did for his country thing'.
Sure, the special effects and the fight scenes are breath taking, but that simply doesn't make a good movie. And even at some point, the fights got a little bit confusing as far as not being able who were the Autobots and who were the Decepticons. I wanted this movie to be good so bad only to shove it on the face of all those that dared to call the first one bad. But the movie didn't love up to its predecessor. And I know some might say that I shouldn't be criticizing a movie of robotic aliens based on animated series so hard, but I believe this movie deserves it due to how incredible the first movie was. I even dare to say this movie seems like joke of the first one. The movie is "okay". I'm sure there are a lot of people that enjoyed it, and I respect that. But the truth is that if you consider the first one, Revenge of the Fallen came off short as of to what it was supposed to be. Let's just hope that if they decide to make the third one (which is very likely due to the huge amounts of money that movie has left the producers), the screenwriters do a far better job on the plot and the director gives the viewers, not only flashy special effects and extended mass-destruction scenes, but also a movie than can live up to the first one.