Oh wow, the pyramids and Petra!

Rating: 5/10 (23 June 2009)

Making the first "Transformers" like the apogee of restraint in comparison, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" finds its titular robots joining forces with more Autobots and battling more Decepticons in an ever so disorienting and boisterous fight -- if the Autobots really cared about the earth, why not bring the fight to outer space and reduce human collateral damage? -- while confusing Sam Witwicky with Mutt Williams as Shia LeBouf races across the Middle Eastern desert looking for ancient clues to save Earth from impending doom. No one would make a case of the first "Transformers" to be a masterpiece by the strictest sense of the word, but whereas novelty and a candidly faux-retro approach fueled its success, Michael Bay's follow-up to the wildly successful cinematic spin-off to a popular toy line is, while not without its share of beguiling moments, an incessant revelry of excesses, fervently continuing the director's fetishitic shots of men and women wielding arms and highly stylized yet emotionally inept whack at human drama.
Picking up two years after its predecessor left off, the Autobots have teamed up with the American and British military in combating the remaining Decepticons on Earth who successfully revive Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving) from the depths of the sea. Sam (LeBouf) is now off to college, but not before inadvertently bringing himself deeper into the ongoing war between the Transformers, and eventually finds himself scurrying past the ancient sites of Egypt and Jordan (oooh, Petra!) to look for the Matrix which will supposedly bring a dead Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) back to life and destroy an age-old enemy in the process.
Plunging at a breakneck pace such that characterization and human interest are obligatorily phoned in though never delved into (not that Bay and scriptwriters Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Ehren Kruger care), "Revenge of the Fallen" pointlessly barrels through the plotting not unlike its hulking metallic warriors without regard to narrative dynamics to support its cacophonous setpieces or to give more structural reason for its wanderlust-inducing locales. Bay, though at least soft-pedaling with the usual racial stereotypes, still fails miserably in callous mayhem and, less glaringly, in making his human characters more relevant, that under the pretense he's interested in fleshing them out, merely paints his latest would-be summer blockbuster with so much burnish that -- including the product placements and his veneration to Megan Fox's sexily tanned curves -- "Revenge of the Fallen" functions not unlike this month's glossy lad mag.