Reviews by Hubie Goode: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material


Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, John Benjamin Hickey, Ramon Rodriguez, Isabel Lucas, John Turturro
Director: Michael Bay

“Alex, I’ll take ‘How Many Other Movies Have Been Picked Dry in This Movie’ for $500.”

“Okay, and the answer is.... Terminator, Speed Racer, The Longest Yard, Star Wars, War Games, Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III, any Godzilla movie, any Disney movie with wacky side-kicks, any movie where the good guy can die and then be brought back to life.....”

Well, you get the picture. Ahhhh, I thought to myself, as this movie excruciatingly marched across the screen, to be 17-20 years old again. As Ronald Coleman would have said: “I remember it well.” Hmmm.. am I dating myself?

At first glance I found this movie extremely difficult to look at. The Transformers themselves are visually confusing and not a little bit ugly. The only small saving grace was the colorful Optimus Prime. The CGI is indeed impressive, whew, but ugh to those robots.

They also continue something I never could quite understand about this sort of thing. For instance, you remember the Big Foot films and assorted fake documentaries surrounding the Big Foot/Sasquatch mystery. They always show in those movies things that would “scare” you, and yet if it was a real animal-man then it would have things that scared it too, and so on. (One I saw had a cat dying of a heart attack because Big Foot was in the area. I think a cat would just run away.) But my point about Transformers is, the bad guys, like demons from hell, are all covered with spikes and horns and sharp edges which really make no sense for them design wise other than to look threatening to YOU. A Cactus has needles for a purpose, and I think the Decepticons (the bad guys) here would also only have blades sticking out randomly from their bodies as a result of some function. Kind of in the way demons really don’t need spiked teeth except to make you think of predators. But these are just spikey to make YOU nervous.

The writers are on full out overload on this one. Much of the story is a waste of time, especially in the first half hour. The actual beginning of the movie doesn’t happen until some 30-40 minuets in to the movie when the bad guy is awakened at the bottom of the sea. The editing room must have been napping big time! There is so much included that need not be I felt like I was looking at a double feature part one and two. Why, oh why?

There are the usual teenager trappings in such movies: jokes at the parents expense, dope jokes, a dog humping a girl’s leg jokes, nubile young college coeds who are overly sexed jokes, yadd yadda. You know what you’re getting with many of today’s Hollywood incursions into the teenage movie marketing. After all, they are just giving the audience what it wants. Tons and tons of violence, explosions, almost death scenes, young women scantily clad... and they ALL look like models. Oh yes, I remember college, all the young women there looked like fashion models. Yep. Uh huh.

Anyone who has built a roller coaster for a theme park knows exactly what’s going on here. If you understand the thrill of the psychosexual. The last 45 minutes of the film illustrates what I mean quite well, it’s one long war scene with huge .... and I mean really huge, scale explosions. And they go on and on. And the most insulting thing for me was watching the great pyramid of Giza get destroyed. OH the HUMANITY!!! ;-)

Oh yes, that’s one more movie ripped ... Stargate.

And what of the plot you ask? It’s pretty basic. You’ve seen it all before in a hundred different places. I will say this, I found the adult involvement in this a bit incredible. I couldn’t swallow the sight of military personnel chatting face to face with gargantuan toys. The funny ones were a bad touch, also... they simply confused the overall tone of the whole pic. Can you imagine a real Terminator movie with a couple of slapping and jiving rapper type terminators? Nah.

It tries hard to be everything and is yet very empty as an emotional exercise. The only real human element that seemed credible was Miss Eyecandy 2009, Megan Fox. When she is given something to actually do besides look fetching, she really can act. A prime example of why there were giants in Caanan.

Sadly, this is one of those products that simply won’t be the same on the small screen. It’s the kind of thing that has such huge scope that it only belongs on an IMAX wall, and yet, it is at the same time excrutiating to watch. Pity.

2/5 Stars (I could understand the visceral impact of the last half, but found the waste of narrative in the first half bewildering.)