Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

"I am directly below the enemy's scrotum."

If a picture is worth a thousand words, that's your review right there – an otherwise respectable actor demeaning himself in one of the worst performances of his career, as his character is teabagged by the enormous steel testicles of a giant robot from outer space. Thanks a lot, Michael Bay. That's an image I didn't need seared into my psyche forever.

Frankly, after sitting through all 149 grueling minutes of the director's latest assault on the senses, I'm at a loss for words. Because I suppose that it's my professional responsibility to provide every movie the benefit of a full and thorough review, I'll give it a go anyway.

'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen' presents a real conundrum. The movie has grossed over $800 million at the worldwide box office, and yet I don't know a single person who actually liked it. I don't just mean among critics or my own snooty film snob friends, either. I'm talking about general audiences, the people who were big fans of the last 'Transformers' movie and eagerly handed over their money to see the sequel. People really hated it. Hated it.

Nonetheless, the film still raked in money hand over fist. How does something like this happen? I expect this type of big stupid summer action movie to have a huge opening weekend, and then sink like a rock in the following weeks as the toxic word of mouth spreads. Like the infernal machine that it is, 'Transformers' just kept going, week after week, growing bigger and bigger, until it was (domestically) the highest-grossing picture of the year. Usually, this sort of performance is reserved for movies that people are excited to see multiple times in the theater. Were there really people who saw 'Revenge of the Fallen' and liked it enough to pay for another viewing? There must have been, but I just can't fathom it.

They say that movies like this are critic-proof, and apparently that's true. A movie like this isn't meant to be dissected, analyzed, or (heaven forbid) even thought about in the slightest. This isn't filmmaking with any pretense of art. This is pure sensation, nothing but flashy colors, fast movement, and loud noises thrown at viewers in the hopes of putting them into a glassy-eyed, vegetative trance for a couple hours. Audiences will pay to see these movies no matter what critics like me write about them. In fact, critics are expected to hate these movies. It's practically a rite of passage, proof that the work is hip and young and of-the-moment. This is entertainment for the people, not for the elderly, uptight elitist snobs in tweed jackets, smoking their pipes while dashing off scathing missives that their highbrow circle of Literary Society friends will find urbanely witty.

Hey, I get it. I like a good popcorn flick as much as the next guy. Emphasis on the word "good." Further, as a child of the 1980s, I grew up with the original Transformers in toys, cartoons, and comic books. Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Starscream were essential parts of my childhood. My first Transformer toy was Sunstreaker, the Autobot that transformed into a yellow Lamborghini sports car. When I first opened the package, he was just about the coolest thing I'd ever seen, even if his arms and legs barely moved in robot mode. Before long, I had a sizable collection of the toys. I read the comic book every month. I watched the cartoon every day after school. I saw the animated 'Transformers: The Movie' in the theater in 1986, and it's remained a nostalgic favorite ever since. So, although I'm a critic now, and hence perceived as the sworn enemy of all things silly or fun, I'd like to think that I still have a little credibility on this subject.

When Michael Bay directed the first live-action 'Transformers' movie in 2007, it was a massive hit. Not only did it bring in a lot of money, audiences really liked it. They thought it was good. They wanted to see it again and again, and couldn't wait for a sequel.

To say that 'Transformers' is the best movie that Michael Bay has ever directed is damning it with faint praise. Personally, I wasn't particularly a fan of it. The metallic monstrosities in the movie bore no resemblance to the classic characters they were named after. They all appeared to be random assemblages of constantly moving shiny parts, and they all looked exactly the same as one another. Other than the Autobot leader Optimus Prime, it was basically impossible to tell one character from another. Even the basic concept – that giant robots could disguise themselves as cars, planes, and whatnot – was twisted in unrecognizable ways. In none of the Transformers' previous mythology could the robots transform into anything they felt like, just by looking at it. Nor could any random object suddenly be turned into a living robot by a magical doodad called the Allspark. The movie also devoted far too much screen time to the human characters and not enough to the robots. The Transformers were relegated to supporting roles in their own movie.

Like everything Michael Bay makes, 'Transformers' was big, loud, and obnoxious. On the "dumb fun" scale, for me, it fell more towards dumb than fun. But, all things considered, I didn't hate it. I just didn't like it all that much. I felt it was a missed opportunity, but I can accept that I was in the minority with that opinion.

So now we have a sequel, 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'. It's everything the first movie was and more. Where the first movie was big, this one is bigger. Where the first one was long, this one is longer. Where the first one was dumb, this one is dumber. It's got more robots, more explosions, more groan-inducing comic relief, and more leering shots of Megan Fox in short shorts. It's like Michael Bay took 'Transformers', stuck it in a Xerox machine, and made a copy at 150% magnification.

Is there a plot? Ostensibly, perhaps. A couple years after the events of the first movie, the government has somehow covered up all traces of the Autobots and Decepticons. I guess nobody noticed when those 60-foot tall robots destroyed half of Los Angeles. Everybody must have been out of town that weekend, or something. Anyway, the Autobots have been working with the U.S. military to hunt down and slaughter the remaining Decepticons. When I say "working with the U.S. military," by that I mean that the puny humans who stand absolutely no chance of surviving an engagement with the Decepticons make a nuisance of themselves and get in the way while the Autobots try not to step on too many of them.

More importantly, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is going off to college! And he's still with his hot girlfriend Mikaela (Fox), but there's another hot girl at college that wants him, and he has to bumble and stumble to avoid having sex with her. And his mom eats a pot brownie and goes all crazy! Oh, the hilarity!

Meanwhile, those sneaky Decepticons are up to something. They have a plan to revive their leader Megatron from the dead. And then Megatron will go back to their home planet of Cybertron to bring back another leader called The Fallen who will come to Earth to turn on a big machine that will destroy our sun to make Energon, the fuel source that the robots need to live. See, the whole thing is a subtle political allegory for the current energy and environmental crises. Honest.

While it's fair to say that the first 'Transformers' wasn't exactly an intellectually stimulating work of art, 'Revenge of the Fallen' is flat-out, insultingly stupid. Beyond the broad overview I gave above, the specific workings of the plot are virtually incoherent. Characters behave in ways and take actions that make no logical sense at all. There's little to no continuity from one scene to another. At one moment, Sam and Mikaela are in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Then they step outside and are somehow at the Aircraft Boneyard in the Arizona desert, with no buildings in sight for miles. And that isn't explained or addressed in the slightest. The script is filled with pointless subplots that have nothing to do with anything, terrible dialogue, lewd sex jokes and profanity that have no place in a movie intended for children, and idiotic comic relief. The movie even has a close-up of John Turturro's hairy butt in a thong. Worst of all, the bumbling Autobot twins, Skids and Mudflap, are shamefully racist caricatures of black urban youth. They might as well be in blackface.

I could spend the next several paragraphs detailing every inanity in the film, but the good folks at Topless Robot already did a fine job with that. I'd rather let you read their take on it.

As always, Michael Bay directs like a 12 year-old with ADD who's just snorted five lines of cocaine. His camera swings frantically all over the place, while the characters never stop moving. Bay's cinematic style is often confused with Shaky Cam, the disorienting handheld technique used in movies like 'The Bourne Trilogy'. That's not entirely correct. Bay rarely uses handheld or shakes the camera. Instead, he choreographs elaborate dolly and crane moves, but frames all his shots far too tightly. He then edits the scenes in a spastic rapid-fire rhythm so that no shot remains on screen for more than a second at a time. The result is that you can rarely tell what you're looking at. There's no sense of spatial orientation in any scene.

I really just don't understand the point of spending $200 million to film huge action sequences with extensive visual effects, only to shoot and edit them in such a way that the audience has no idea what's going on at any moment. When two supposedly important characters fight to the death, how do you know which one to root for when they both look the same and their movements are visually incoherent? In the movie's big climax, when Optimus rips the guts out of his last remaining enemy, I had absolutely no idea whether that was Megatron, Starscream, The Fallen, or just some other random robot that happened to be standing there.

The movie is nothing but a series of random shapes and colors constantly colliding into one another while characters scream, explosions detonate, and loud noises blare on the soundtrack. It's truly wearying to watch. At 2 1/2 agonizing hours in length, 'Revenge of the Fallen' isn't even really a movie. It's an endurance test. How long can you last before it breaks your will?

With all that said, perhaps the most disappointing thing about 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen' is that, despite all the fan outrage over its inadequacies, I couldn't even be bothered to build up enough bile to hate it. It stirred no strong emotions in me one way or another. The movie was just a chore that had to be gotten through. When it was over, I needed a nap. Although I certainly can't claim to have liked it, I also can't pretend that it was the worst movie I've seen in 2009. I feel melancholy more than anything else. It left me depressed that this is what the state of pop culture entertainment has come to.

Is it too soon for a 'Batman Begins' or 'Casino Royale' style reboot? I still feel that the material has the potential to make a good movie, potential that's been squandered in two successive attempts. Perhaps it's already time for someone to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.

No matter how I felt about the movie, 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen' is destined to be one of the best-selling home video releases of the year. Dreamworks Home Entertainment (via their distributor Paramount Home Entertainment) have issued the movie on Blu-ray as a Two-Disc Special Edition. Several packaging variations are available. The general retail release comes in a standard keepcase with slipcover. The cardboard slipcover has an image of Optimus Prime, while the case underneath has an image of… Well, frankly, I don't know if that's supposed to be Megatron, Starscream, or The Fallen. They all look the same to me.

Alternately, you can also buy a Limited Edition Gift Set with a bust of Optimus Prime's head. Target stores have an exclusive "transforming" Bumblebee case. Futureshop stores in Canada also have their own exclusive Steelbook case.

All of the above contain the standard 149-minute theatrical cut of the movie. However, the packaging includes a disclaimer that, "Dialogue has been changed from the theatrical version." From what I've been able to determine, a few incidental lines of background chatter have been shifted around or replaced, but nothing significant to the plot of the movie.

The film also played in IMAX theaters in a version that ran 32 seconds longer. (Early reports of the difference being 71 seconds were incorrect.) That version can be obtained on Blu-ray in the Big Screen Edition exclusively at Wal-Mart. The Big Screen Edition has similar packaging to the general retail release, except that the slipcover has a different close-up shot of Optimus, and the case underneath sports an image of Bumblebee.

The disc under review here is the general retail release with the standard theatrical cut. We will attempt to review the Big Screen Edition at a later date.