44 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
To Be Or Not To Be, That Is The Question?
This is a tough movie to review, mostly because there is NO right answer. Some say it's a bad movie, (my sister) others say it's the best movie they every saw (My friend) And others say it's a O.k. film (me) I was mostly fascinated on the vast amount of detail the animators used on these Autobots and Decepticons. I really like the art and the beautiful colors added to the...
37 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
A new low, even for Michael Bay.
One of the chief complaints that I hear from people, mainly fanboys, regarding Bay's adaptation of the Transformers to the big screen is that Bay "murdered their childhood". With this movie, I think it is much more serious than that. Here, I think he murdered the fine art of moviemaking altogether. I have often been critical of Jerry Bruchheimer's productions in the...
One of the chief complaints that I hear from people, mainly fanboys, regarding Bay's adaptation of the Transformers to the big screen is that Bay "murdered their childhood". With this movie, I think it is much more serious than that. Here, I think he murdered the fine art of moviemaking altogether. I have often been critical of Jerry Bruchheimer's productions in the past when the fact is that a sizable percentage of those productions were directed by none other than Bay. Now that Bay and Bruckheimer seem to have gone their seperate ways, Bay's direction seems more odious than ever. You would think that someone who has been in the motion picture industry as long as Bay would improve and grow over time. Not so.
If I were to go into detail about all of TRotF's problems, I would have to write a book that makes a library dictionary look like a travel brochure. So I can only scratch the surface. Getting started, I must say that if you found the confusing battle sequences of the first movie incoherent and sloppy, you'll find that things have only changed for the worse here. Bay is obviously a firm believer in throwing in as many explosions and CGI effects into an action sequence as he can at the expense of coherence, believability, and excitement.
I further had problems with all of the characters human and robot alike. Let me start with the former. Spike and Mikala's soap opera about who must say "I love you" first is completely out of place in a movie about robots. Is it just me or is the longest sentence needed to explain the situation intelligently "WHO CARES???"? The scene in which Spike's mother gets high during his college tour made me wonder why the film's writer's are not in an assisted care facility let alone writing blockbuster scripts. While there is not one actor or actress throughout this whole misfire who had a good performance, perhaps the worst offender is John Turturro. Didn't he use to do good movies like Barton Fink? Here he emails in his role. I don't like to speak for others, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who did not need to see his government issue thong.
Now for the robots. Here I'm left with three words - OH DEAR LORD!!! I definitely had problems with Bumblebee. Didn't he have his voice issue corrected at the end of the first movie? I guess Bay felt that we didn't get enough disingenuous pop culture references the first time around. How about that Skidflapz and Mud (is that correct? ummm - who cares?)? Why don't we just bring back the blackface and go back to calling Sidney Portier an "Uncle Tom" for playing dignified black men while we're at it, chilluns? And what is the point of having robots that fart, have testicles, and hump legs? My opinion is that we need to let our sense of humor evolve past such crudeness. However, if you must put scatological and sexual humor in a film, then put it in something R-rated and not something that is being marketed as a toy line for children.
TRotF was not just a bad movie for me, it made me very disgusted with how the Hollywood Big Money perceives the audience that is their financial lifeline. Hollywood is biting the hand that feeds it. There is a lot of misinformation floating around that if you dislike TRotF then you must be a stiff overcultured L7. If you liked this movie, that is your right. Go ahead and watch it again. Go ahead and write a positive review for it if it means that much to you. But if you decide to leave a nasty comment in my Comment area, think about the movie you are defending. Think about the robot testicles, Spike's stoned mother, the ethnic mistrel show robots, or John Turturro's exposed backside. Or better yet don't think about it.
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As someone who loved the first movie- and was fortune enough to snag it for a $1 after rebate on Blu-Ray (an absolute steal)- I was utterly disappointed by this sequel. Bigger budget, bigger robots, but a wholly inferior movie.
I saw it in IMAX, and in it, the scale of the movie is amazing. If you can turn off your brain- and I mean, flick the switch- for two hours, it's a fun ride.
The movie starts with Optimus narrating, explaining the Fallen. Plot setup, all good. We cut in to the army, getting ready to fight the deceptions. Rock music plays as N.E.S.T. (The government group responsible for working with the Autobots to keep the Earth safe) gets ready to drop into China. At this point of the movie, I was excited- it was fun.
We then cut to Sam getting ready for college. It's pretty boring stuff- we get a nice shot of Megan Fox detailing a motorcycle (she alleges that they were filming from both sides- eye candy is eye candy), but other than that, it's kind of the trite college scene you've seen in a million movies before. A piece of the Allspark (which was plunged into Megatron's chest- the little piece that the government found is locked up) falls out of Sam's shirt, and he sees some weird stuff. He drops it, the appliances go nuts. The house is destroyed, and Sam yells at Bumblebee, who inexplicably has once again lost the ability to talk.
From here on, the movie goes downhill. Sam gets to college, and we witness a bunch of campy/boring stuff. Sam's roommate- suprise- believes that the coverup of the events of the first movie are a conspiracy. Sam, of course, tells him to brush it off. Meanwhile, if you thought Sam's mom couldn't get any more awkward from the first movie, you're wrong- you get the treat of several minutes of the most awkward moments in cinema. Bravo if you want that, but isn't this movie about the autobots?
Moving along. Sam starts tripping out from the piece of the AllSpark and draws symbols. The Decepticons want him (knowledge he possesses from that piece) and begin wreaking havok. Unlike the first movie, there's no good fighting- the Autobots are on the run most of the time, and the scenes are so poorly paced that you can't tell who is fighting who, which side is winning, etc.
Additionally, the number of joke characters (see the twin robots) and immature jokes (John Turturro informs the army at one point that he is "below the enemy's scrotum") in this movie are appalling.
The ending battle is an incoherent, frenzied scene, during which you can barely tell what's going on. And after all that, the autobots win the battle in two minutes. Fin.
The first movie, despite its flaws, had a decent plot. And while it had a little bit less robot fighting than I would like, the fight scenes in the movie were fun to watch and the viewer could tell who was fighting who.
My recommendation would be a rental/on demand. Visually, the movie is gorgeous in 1080P, but it's not a good movie.
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I'll keep this short and sweet. The visual effects and action are very good. The story was non-existent, acting could have been better, ending was anticlimactic, I'm pretty sure the screenwriters didn't proof read the script, and they movie lost me when Shia went to Transformers heaven. I can normally sit through senseless action movies with ease, but I was simply so irritated by the lack of heart that I couldn't enjoy this, really sad considering I really enjoyed the movie. One star for the cool action sequence in the woods.
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I had been anxiously awaiting the arrival of this movie after seeing the first one. I was excited because I enjoyed the first one so much, I was excited because a lot of the filming had been done in my area, I was excited!
After seeing it I was very, very disappointed.
I spent the last half of the movie looking at my watch just waiting for it to be over. The final part of the story in the desert takes WAY too long. Aside from that, I can't even describe what happened in the movie. Did anything even happen? Or was it just a 2-1/2 hour fight scene? I have no idea. Even the special effects, which I saw in IMAX, ceased to be interesting after a while.
I'd keep going, but I'd just be restating what other people have said. You can click on the "1 Star" reviews and read it all. My main point for writing this review was just to say how EXCITED I WAS FOR THIS MOVIE and then how disappointed I was after sitting through it. It was just not enjoyable at all.
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First, do an Internet video search for "Michael Bay explosions" and watch the video you get, a gem from Seth Green and Robot Chicken. The only real difference from this video and this fun little over-the-top CGI-fest is that the movie goes on for an additional two hours.
Synopsis: Bad AGRs (alien giant robots) are mad at good AGRs, and mad at a few choice humans, too, and they all duke it out all over our little planet, destroying lots of landmarks in very, very loud and visually cool ways.
Of course, my 11-year-old son loved this thing, all the way through. He pronounced it much better than the first Transformers movie, and I have to agree with him, as I sat through that one, and gave up on it after about thirty minutes.
From the first minutes, you get high-tech military ops, explosions, cool flying debris, massive and gratifying Hollywood movie explosion fireballs, chases, and CGI action so fast and so intricate and that you've got to put the DVD player on slo-mo to actually see all the work that the F/X geeks put into the scenes. Never mind the ridiculous opening premise of the Chinese government allowing a full-blown American (there are a couple of Brit allies, in the thinnest sliver of a nod to multilateralism) military combat op to take place on their soil.
This film is a nonstop raging orgy of military hardware, reeeeeally close to but not quite a two-hour commercial for the US Air Force, with a little bit of Army and Marines thrown in to, you know, actually close with the enemy and hold the objective. It sure looks to me like the Navy didn't want to play in the film, as there's an extended scene of an aircraft carrier being blasted apart by the bad AGRs, sailors and all of their really cool hardware--wait for it--yes--exploding and going down. Like we got in Iron Man, there are a lot of USAF air-power goodies, with the C-17 and F-22 featuring prominently and early, F-16s, A-10s, the Predator, then the B1 bomber. We even get the classic SR-71, but sadly not flying. The only thing we didn't get was the 117 or the B2, or a Global Hawk. The Army and Marines throw in some BFVs, Abrams and MLRS, and of course there are tons of Blackhawk helicopters. And everything shoots stuff, stuff that blows up!
All of that gear, and then some, is thrown at the bad AGRs, and they throw more than their share back, in very active and deadly combat. But, we never, ever, see anybody dead or dying, other than the robots. There is no blood, no reality of the literally tens of thousands who get killed over the course of this film. While not as egregious as the glossing over the hundreds of millions killed in that awful The Day After Tomorrow, or the billions who are sure to die in the upcoming "2012" disaster-fest, it's something like irresponsible to just waste thousands of folks in crystal-clear CGI while being so thoroughly removed from the true, horrific nature of it.
And because it's a Michael Bay film, you've got lots of slo-mo American flags fluttering in pure rippling jingoistic splendor. This is awesomely crafted pandering for the never-been-past-the-state-line audience at home, but I can't help but see it as just another reason for the other 5.7 billion people on the planet to think we're arrogant jerks.
I enjoyed the character of National Security Advisor Galloway as a pure and unapologetic lambasting of SecDef Rumsfeld, right down to the iconic specs. He gets his, eventually, of course. The only screwy part of this, is when he charges in to take over, he's got a warrant from the President, who is named once as President Obama. This indirectly makes Obama look like a fool for appointing him, while it's the moron Bush Republican administration that apparently is the target.
I love to watch John Turturro, although sitting through You Don't Mess With the Zohan really was pretty difficult. His reprised role as Agent Simmons allows him to be spastic, crazy, and get all weird, a great character and a perfect fit for the film.
Camaro-bot comes across as sad, a developmentally challenged autobot. He's a good guy, sure, but he's more like a V-8 golden retriever.
Flick and Flack, or Zap and Zop, whatever the hell the two twin robots are called were hard to see as anything but annoying, contributing almost nothing to the story but idiotic wisecracks during the slow parts. Why, yes, their characters and dialog were offensive, despite what the producers have said. You'd think sophisticated entertainment professionals would have been smart enough to realize that this kind of portrayal isn't quite the thing to do anymore. The movie could do without these two.
And the illustrious Miss Megan Fox: Sorry, but all I could see of this Ultra-Hottie Of The Moment was a deep spray-on tan and many layers of industrial-grade lipstick. Early in the film she comes across as nothing but trashy, and later she's nothing but makeup, with delicate smudges to make it appear she's actually been doing something. She's pretty, sure, but not the greatest thing since Jill St. John or Raquel Welch.
Of course, dead isn't really dead. Just like the first film, folks die but they don't really die. It's just, y'know, an illusion, so easily rectified with a magic liquid/crystal/gem, mystical knowledge, extraterrestrial power, that kind of too-easily crafted and lame gimmick.
Bottom Line: Hey, this is a US blockbuster, so it's all lowest common denominator. You can't expect depth of character, logical story, normal people, normal situations, or subtlety of story or expression. But, buddy, You CAN expect massive CGI-rendered physical destruction, action, gunplay, chases, and tons of weapons, gadgets and technology, a hot chick or two, MTV-style editing and a soundtrack that will rattle your fillings, and this film delivers a surplus of all.
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This is a tough movie to review, mostly because there is NO right answer. Some say it's a bad movie, (my sister) others say it's the best movie they every saw (My friend) And others say it's a O.k. film (me) I was mostly fascinated on the vast amount of detail the animators used on these Autobots and Decepticons. I really like the art and the beautiful colors added to the CGI and special effects. Transformers 2 is one of the most visually entertaining movies of this year. Even though the plot wasn't as good. in another note, it sometimes felt like there were alot of running around back and forth throughout the whole film. In the end, I can't say it's the best movie ever but I won't say it's the worst movie ever but If your still curious about watching it for the first time, I say rent it first before you buy.
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The first movie was arguably the one of the best science fiction fantasy movies of 2007. Everything clicked in the first one. I thought the follow up would be just as good and was I ever wrong.
Revenge of the Fallen was just that a character called the Fallen is introduced as Megatron's master & decides now is the time to take over.
They missed the target on this one. Too much toilet, bathroom and pointless vulgar language and humor to start off..characters that were just plain stupid...Autobots that had no name and had ghetto humor.Robots that were not even part of the TV series...boy what went wrong here (everything basically)...
I cant believe just how bad this was..Fallen is the key word...Fallen from the great heights from the first picture to this lousy sequel.
I have no idea what made Michael Bay decide to go for bathroom humor, closeups of a man's fatty butt, a character walking around with his pants down , endless scenes of Megan Fox' boobie cleavage, and a pointless "I love you" subplot that went nowhere at all. I mean really, if you love someone tell them - don't play the battle of wills. Is that how Bay sees relationships - who gives in to who ? Do you wait until someone dies until you say 'I love you I need you' and endless pour your heart out dribble ? Bleck !!
This was also overlong running at 2 1/2 hours with endless scenes of the cast running around Egypt looking for signs to find the Matrix of Leadership (which in the cartoon Optimus already has this in his chest) I was waiting for a Transformer Mummy to come out. Take the worst out of the Mummy Series and National Treasure & National Lampoon them with robots and this is what you get..
The action was okay - good, but explosions , SPFX , more robots with 'cool' (uncool) dialog do not replace a movie filled with holes, lousy toilet humor and just utter tedium in Egypt....
On top of that Rainn Wilsons parents were everything out of a nightmare. What kind of parents are these two ? Who came up with their asinine lines. The mother was just horrible with her dialog. And they kept popping up out of nowhere as did characters - just popping up out of nowhere, half the time I was asking where did this person come from...this made me want to watch the cartoon which at least were classier than this and had a more serious tone than this..
As much as I like Transformers & being a fan for over 2 decades this movie was a car wreck..this would make a great Rifftrax or Cinematic Titanic title (for those who are MST3K fans)
It really was that bad, and yet, you really want to root for Optimus Prime, you want to like him, but the film wont let you. Or you will like Prime but nothing else.
I know Transformers 3 is in the works..I hope Michael Bay & company decide to re-watch the first one to see that formula.
For those that did like it and want to own it , the 2 disc is the way to go as it has all the bonus features. Ill be questioning your sanity however :-)
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The first Transformers movie was great! And the second?
Bigger, longer, louder, more robots, more action, more Megan Fox, more CGI ... so how can you end up with a worse movie than the original?
Well, it happened, as Michael Bay definitely went out of control here. What are the problems with this movie?
Characters - When John Turturro returns and actually becomes one of the more sympathetic characters in the movie, that tells you just how packed the script is with truly annoying characters. Ramon Rodriguez led the list for Character-Who-I-Most-Wanted-to-See-Gutted-By-Megatron. Isabel Lucas, the supposed Aussie hottie and rival to Megan Fox, was OMG some wierd orange shade of tan... NOT attractive, gross, really. Skids and Mudflap... WTF? Oh yeah, for sure there were strong racist overtones here in their jive-talking and monkey-ghetto appearance, but what was worse was that they were just sooooo Jar-Jar Binks acid-on-the-nerves annoying.
The list of characters in the "Needs To Be Killed by Megatron Real Soon" category is just too long for this movie to be enjoyable.
Robots, you want more giant robots? Way too many giant robots - couldn't hardly tell who was who in all the fighting, couldn't even see what all the fighting moves were... lots of robot deathblows, the CGI was great, but the images were so densely packed with detail that they blurred in the mind - way, way Too Much Information!!! Can we get subtitles for the action sequences on the DVD/Blu-Ray?
More TMI - was it me, or did the dialogue sound compressed and speeded up? Several times, it sounded like Sam and Mikaela were talking to each other at Fedex speeds - no they didn't sound like chipmunks, but it is possible to speed up the soundtrack and lower the tonal frequencies to normal. Maybe this was the only way Michael Bay could get the movie to come in at only 2-1/2 hours instead of four hours.
Plot... well, seriously, after all the critics decrying the lack of any plot in this movie, I came away thinking that this problem with the movie was way overblown compared to all of its other problems. I don't know about you, but I didn't come into this movie expecting any plot. This is after all a movie about giant robots fighting each other.
But somehow or another, in the first movie, we were made to care more about these robots, and about the humans they were fighting over. That was what made the first Transformers so enjoyable. All of that went out the window in this movie. As you sit through this very long second movie in the Transformers franchise, you begin to wish that Megatron could hurry up and gut everybody in the movie....
...Except for Megan Fox of course. Fox manages to appear even more lovely in this film than the first, the only thing improved from the first movie...
Overall, though, by piling in an excess of almost everything except sympathetic characters into this movie, Michael Bay has made this movie into an example of information overload, and it becomes just a tedious exercise for the eyes.
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Michael Bay can make some great explosions. He has trouble creating a meaningful plot. Rent this movie, skip the scenes with racial stereotype bots, and watch the fight scenes in the beginning and in the end of the film. You will have just barely gotten your money's worth.
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While there is nothing wrong with the blu-ray dvd item here, most negative reviews are critiquing the content of the movie and its horrid script. If you want tons of action for the sake of action and no cohesive or competent script, go fot it.
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