Eye Candy #116 - "Transformers - Revenge of the Fallen"

Transformers Revenge of the Fallen: Not as bad as everyone has told you it was, yet not as good as its predecessor or as its ambitions want it to be. Picking up where the first movie left, Sam Witwicky is going off to college as the Decepticons launch a new assault to resurrect Megatron and find a new source of Energon, to which Mr. Witwicky is the key. Back again are Optimus Prime, Bumble Bee, Ironhide, with some new Autobots, including the Arcee cycle girls and the twins, two minstrel-like characters who do in fact act like racist Amos-and-Andy stereotypes, down to the front gold tooth (sorry, Paramount, but all your explanations don’t hold water). We also get the baddies Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, and new ones like Devastator, Jetfire, and Demolisher. Hijinks ensue around the globe and Sam and the Autobots move to stop the Decepticons and their leader, the Fallen. The film does have some problems - 1.) the transformer special effects are needlessly complicated, making them confusing and hard-to-follow. It got to one point near the end when robots were getting shot left and right and you had no idea who was who because they all looked so darn similar; 2.) it is the rare film that handles exposition well, and it is a rarer film still that does it in a sequel. This was not one of those films. Perhaps if the message of the film were something deeper than, “you earn leadership and its respect”, I could handle it being 150 minutes long, but I was ready for things to wrap up at the 2 hour mark; and 3.) it’s dramatically uneven - there is a lot of silly humor here, from toilet jokes to goofy sidekicks to racist robots who admit they can’t read. Juxtaposing that against large robot violence doesn’t really work. I still believe that the ability to turn this franchise into something truly worthwhile is beyond Michael Bay. Woodchuck sez, “Disappointing, but only mildly so.”