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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Bigger budget, Bigger bots, but not a better movie, November 8, 2009
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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45 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A new low, even for Michael Bay., October 24, 2009
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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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I was incredibly excited for this movie..., November 9, 2009
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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