'Transformer' fans, lend me your ears - please

Rating: 4/10 (26 June 2009)

In an effort to prove the chaos theory, or the adage that the more noise the better, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," Paramount's sequel to the wildly successful 2007 original is long in the tooth, but comes up short of the bar laid by its predecessor.
And while the first installment used comedy and humorous situations that tied in seamlessly with the story of a robotic civil war and the hapless humans caught in the crossfire, here the laughs are forced (a "That 70s Show" mom gets high on brownies, John Tuturro as a CIA man turned butcher, a pair of jive-cracking Jar Jar Binks-like Autobots - complete with gold teeth, etc.).
Then, as the Grinch would say, there's the "noise, noise, noise." Cranked up to 11 out of a possible 10 on the decibel level, every tick is ear-bleedingly apparent and causes me to label it, "Indiana Jones and the Loud Crusade." This is appropriate on several levels, too, as our hero, Sam (Shia LaBeouf), becomes an amateur archaeologist and symbologist in an effort to figure out the signs he sees in his head.
Evidently, the shape-shifting contraptions have been on earth since the Dawn of Man (or at least since the Dawn of Spear-Throwing Mixed Race Egyptian Man). When a piece of the shard (from the all-powerful cube of the first film) touches him, Sam's mind fills up with all of this ancient knowledge. Knowing this, the bad guys (Decepticons), led by The Fallen (voice of Tony Todd) and Megatron (Hugo Weaving) capture Sam, his girlfriend Mykaela (Megan Fox) and college roommate Leo Spitz (Ramon Rodriguez, who plays second comedy fiddle to Turturro, if that's conceivable), carting them to the Sahara Desert.
Tagging along on this fun-filled trip to Egypt is an elite squad of U.S. soldiers under the leadership of Maj. Josh Duhamel ("Transformers") and Master Sgt. Tyrese Gibson ("Flight of the Phoenix"), their Autobot allies and, of course, mom and pop (Julie White and Kevin Dunn - who has made a living out of playing the disbelieving father in so many of these kinds of films, including "Small Soldiers").
There's transformer battles aplenty here in the hot desert sand when Sam's own vehicle, Bumble Bee, goes postal and even the embarrassing Steppinfetchit Brothers, Sideswipe and Mudflap, prove their mettle. There is also the introduction of another metal monster, Jet Fire (Mark Ryan), a Decepticon who switched sides years ago because -oh, who cares?! In addition, there's another subplot of Sam's attempts to save an injured Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and the Decepticons trying to uncover a machine that draws energy from the Sun (buried in a pyramid) or something like that. All of these stories make for quite a long running time (for an action movie) and come crashing together in an extremely noisy conclusion.
Director Michael Bay (who learned subtle film-making on the set of "Pearl Harbor") also employees a great deal of quick edit, jump cut, hand-held camera shots which assault the eyes as much as his sound effects attack the ears. And speaking of ears, did I hear bits of dialogue from "Forrest Gump" or was I just dreaming?!
So, if your ears can stand the machine gun rounds, motor shells, missiles, bomb drops, confusing robotic punch outs and you can take this for almost two-and-a-half hours, this is the perfect sequel. To be fair, the CGI effects are very good (even though many times I could not really tell which robot was doing what to whom), the 'bots are creative and some of the laughs are well solicited.
Overall, not a terrible summer blockbuster addition, but just enough of a diversion to get us to "Public Enemies" and beyond.