Dumb blockbuster which smashes its audience over the head with a brick of CGI effects, stereotypes and incoherent action.

Rating: 5/10 (3 August 2009)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an absolute brain-dead, action packed spectacle which to only the simplest of minds would be an ordeal rather than entertainment. Put simply it's dumb.
The actual movie starts out fine, a sumptous fight scene in Shanghai essentially introduces the war between the Autobots/Humans and the evil Decepticons. After this impressive spectacle it goes downhill from there.
Once you look beyond the special effects (which of course are excellent) there really is so little to feed off, I was literally stunned for 2 1/2 hours (its duration). There are so many things that annoyed me that I was almost laughing ironically every time something happened, by the end because it was all so predictable.
Bigger does not mean better. This was the biggest problem for the film and the reason why the first was so much better as it was far more understated. Revenge of the Fallen claimed to be bigger than the last with bigger fight scenes and more robots. True there is more fighting in this instalment but it all seems so pointless after 2 1/2 hours of watching the same boring trash and unfunny material.
Furthermore we barely see anything of the new robots or indeed the old ones because of the increased number of 'characters' from a dozen to 40. Many of the new intriguing characters such as Soundwave were barely used because the writers couldn't balance out the film between 40 odd robots, even at nearly 3 hours. Also the transformers that do get some screen time didn't seem believable. Only Jazz would say "Punk-ass decepticon" for example and certainly not Ironhide and Optimus Prime, there is no continuity.
Another major problem of this films was its handling of stereotypes. I mean who green lighted the twins? Somebody needs to go and have a serious chat with them about the way the world works. "We don't - we don't really do much reading"- Surely a quote which perfectly describes this dump pile of a movie. Some of the banter is funny, most of it isn't and some of it is disturbingly bad. While the twins were depressingly bad, megan fox's character , who is introduced draped over a motorbike in very short shorts, I mean really short, is just depressing.
Sure it made the 10 year olds behind me hoot with joy but seeing it filled me with sadness that not since Return of the Jedi had we seen such a despicable depiction of a person in a kids film. What was more worrying was this wasn't in order to show the vile nature of a villain but as a form of entertainment for 12 year olds.
Talking of 12 year olds, the toilet Humour was consistent, unfunny and often rather ferocious in its assault. Humping gags were repeated on several different animals (and robots), b*****k jokes were used and I'm pretty sure Megan Fox dropped the F-Bomb at some point. Toilet humour is never funny so why constantly repeat them? At least in the first film the transformers didn't reach this level and weren't spitting at the humans, trying to 'come on' to them and probe them with tentacles coming from their backsides. While the first film was hardly subtle it didn't bludgeon us with a stick like ROTF.
As one would expect the acting and script were non-existent. Jon Voight, the only actor with any reputation has wisely departed and has left a huge acting void.
But who needs actors when you have huge CGI robots and explosions lighting up the screen?. Never has a movie had so little plot and yet been so hard to follow. Watching it was almost like watching two films about robots which had two different scripts as events seem to have no relevance or link to each other.
Huge plot devices are used such as prototype lasers destroying devastator, jet-fire destroying himself to upgrade Optimus Prime, and a random piece of the cube (first film) activating and destroying Sam's House. Utterely random, incoherent rubbish happens in this film that I was almost left stunned by its idiocy. And finally what was the point of the Mexican kid? Despite all these criticisms however one thing about this film that I admire is the effort which has been put into the CGI. I don't mind a lot of CGI (I'm a fan of Star Wars for god's sake) and I really admire the effort that was put into making the films CGI creations look real. They do and you can where the £200 Million budget went, clearly on effects.
Also the music was excellent. Steve Jablonsky certainly knows how to compose an effective score and his music often lifted the film to at least an acceptable level of emotion. Indeed his music arguably makes the forest battle scene which is probably the best scene in the film because of its raw emotion However as usual visuals are no match for good story telling and Transfomers : Revenge of the Fallen falls way short of that mark.