Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

[Scott Mendelson]

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: The IMAX Experience
2009
150 minutes
Rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

There's a little fast-food chicken joint called Star Chicken right
next to the Bridge Theater in the Howard Hughes Promenade. I had never
been there before, but for less than ten bucks I got a decent baked
potato, a soda, and a rather large chicken Caesar wrap. It was a hell
of a sandwich... tons of tasty white meat chicken, rich Caesar
dressing, large tomato chunks, plenty of real romaine lettuce, fresh
cheese, and yes, actual croutons. Should you decide to see
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I suggest you make a point to
either try a new restaurant or eat at a beloved favorite. That way,
your evening won't be a total loss.

A token amount of plot - The Autobots have spent the last two years
working side by side with the US military to track down remaining
Decepticon forces that got away after Megatron perished. But an
increased number of Decepticon attacks, plus an ominous warning, has
Optimous Prime (Peter Cullen) and the military worried about a coming
invasion. Meanwhile, human savior Sam Witwicky (Shia Lebeouf) is off
to college, but he immediately stumbles upon a lost sliver of the
'AllSpark'. Contact with the artifact causes a flood of Earth and
Cybertron knowledge into his head, once again making Sam a target for
the Decepticons.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen represents a shocking amount of
effort and skill going into a product of little entertainment value
and even less significance. The plot is both insanely complicated and
absolutely beside the point. The film is as long as The Dark Knight or
Sex and the City but contains a full middle act where nothing of
consequence occurs. Director Michael Bay once again, possibly out of
budgetary constraints, keeps the focus on the human characters while
giving them almost nothing interesting to say. While there is a token
amount of increased robot on robot fighting this time around, it is so
randomly edited and the characters are so poorly defined, that we
never know who is fighting who and who is winning.

Ironically, the three most annoying characters in the first film, John
Tuturro, Kevin Dunn and Jule White (the latter two as Shia LeBeouf's
parents), provide the sole entertainment this time around. Sam's
climactic scenes with his parents provide the only genuine emotional
content in the film. Megan Fox returns as Shia's girlfriend, bringing
new meaning to the term 'token love interest'. She plays absolutely no
role in the story and is there only because the target demo thinks
she's the hottest thing since Marilyn Monroe. The army is relatively
bland, existing only to get massacred at every given opportunity. For
someone who rants about how much he loves the military and how good he
makes them look onscreen, Michael Bay sure loves showing our fighting
men and women getting slaughtered wholesale.

Barack Obama is seemingly slandered as well, as he is name checked as
the current president and the appointer of the wrongheaded bureaucrat
who shows up, questions everyone, and then interferes whenever
possible (yes, Bush was gently mocked in the first film, but he wasn't
named and his underlings were shown as competent). Obama is also
indirectly blamed for a second-act executive action that hinders the
heroes' ability to save the world. Most inexplicable is the first-act
debate that the evil Theodore Galloway (John Benjamin Hickey) and
Optimus Prime engage in, which ends up becoming a justification for
why the US should stay in Iraq forever. Though to be fair, despite
resembling his cartoon counterpart (who was a good guy), Galloway ends
up closely resembling a young Donald Rumsfeld.

And the only remotely interesting robot, Optimus Prime, has far less
screen time than you'd think, giving the spotlight instead to Mudflap
and Skids (both voiced by Tom Kenny), two bickering robots who look
like monkeys, talk in the most stereotypical Ebonics jive possible,
and apparently can't read. To say that these two are the most
astonishingly racist caricatures that I've ever seen in a mainstream
motion picture would be an understatement. The rest of the robots make
little impression. Starscream is once again a vehicle for abuse. The
Devestator is a speechless giant of a robot, whose sound effects are
apparently voiced by Frank Welker (the cartoon voice of Megatron). Ah,
poor Frank Welker. Not only did he lose out on voicing Megatron to
Hugo Weaving, but Tony Todd was hired to voice the new villain, The
Fallen, and apparently instructed to do his very best Frank Welker as
Dr. Claw impression.

What of the robot action? Well, there are two genuinely stunning bits,
both shot on IMAX film (fair warning, there are about ten minutes of
IMAX scenes in this film, compared with over 40 minutes in The Dark
Knight). The highlight of the film occurs at the hour mark, as Optimus
Prime faces off against a pointlessly resurrected Megatron and two
other Decepticons in a forest. In IMAX, the fighting robots are
apparently shown to scale, and the richness of the visuals, plus the
overall coherency of the fight, makes this a tour de force sequence.
The only other action scene of note is the arrival of the Devastator,
as he shows up in Egypt during the finale and proceeds to suck
everything in sight into his giant robot mouth (much of this is also
shot in IMAX film). The rest of the action suffers from the same
problems as the first film. It's either impossible to follow and
comprehend, or the action is overly comprised of military men shooting
at off-screen targets.

Other minor and major problems abound in this mess of a movie. Sam is
saddled with a completely unnecessary college roommate, who
inexplicably tags along until the end of the film. The comparative
absence of Optimus Prime leaves the film hollow at its core, since he
was the only robot who had any kind of dramatic impact and/or
character (think of it as a Batman film where Batman was sidelined and
the film then showcases Robin and Batgirl). To be fair, the humans are
much less campy and overtly comical this time around, but now the
robots are completely 'off the wall zany', which again robs the film
of any drama. And what little IMAX footage the film contains is so
stunningly rich and visually gorgeous that it makes the surrounding
moments look cheap and ugly in comparison.

I don't know why I thought this film would be any better than the
original Transformers. My false hope was akin to investigating a
murder and failing to notice the burglar standing over the body with a
smoking gun. I'd imagine that the many critics who inexplicably gave
the original Transformers a pass will now question their tolerance of
that equally terrible film. We may not have gotten the Transformers
sequel we wanted, but we got the one we deserved. But, hey, the
evening wasn't a total loss. That chicken Caesar wrap was fantastic.

Grade: D+