The dullest and most irritating film I've seen in years.

Rating: 1/10 (20 June 2009)

I saw "Transformers 2" yesterday. For some reason, it opened in London before most of the rest of the world. Wow, this was probably the dullest, most stupid and irritating film I've seen in a long time. Like watching paint dry, while being punched in the face at the same time.
Transformers as characters are dull visually, so I'm not sure why they would have made a good movie in the first place. The plot ends up being some symbol-driven Indian Jones quest for something that makes no sense, as does most of the film, which means there's consistency, but not a fun film, at all.
There's the stock shouty sidekick character, a lot of boring explosions and endless minutes of over-sized robots knocking the crap out of each other, which, without any characterisation or plot development is just an exercise in sitting with very expensive computers and having a lot of money to make these things visually interesting, which given the results means that isolating yourself from the screenplay and the rest of the movie, gives the money a fractured feel- between the non-existent plot and the explosion pornography.
If any of it made sense, then the payoff would be somewhat compelling, but this film insults its audience. Nothing wrong with dumb Summer movie, but not so quite stupid and annoying and boring would have helped. Especially, as they added two Transformers that have obviously being hanging around gangs in the ghetto, because they speak so "street". Jar Jar Binks, all is forgiven.
The set pieces are boring too, especially as they're made in isolation to any hint of a plot that engages or makes sense. At 150 minutes, it's at least an hour overlong. People may say, "well, what did you expect?".
True, I wasn't expecting great things, but, in contrast, I didn't expect something so stupidly dull. I'm sure it'll clear up at the box office, but I'll be looking for Michael Mann's new movie to re-engage my cinematic taste buds. I'm not a film snob, but "Transformers 2" upset my sensibilities and didn't entertain. I'm sure it'll make a bundle... which is a pretty sad state of affairs for movies for the future.