Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

[angelophile]

Sadly, I didn't make the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen UK premiere in the end. I'll do a full update on what I was up to instead tomorrow, but I did go up to London to see the movie at the IMAX with friends and so I'll write this review while it's still fresh in my mind.

So here goes:

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the first movie amplified. Everything is bigger. Everything is magnified. But sadly that also means the flaws as well as the strengths.

Simply put, if you loved the first movie, you will love the second - as a big dumb action movie (and boy, is it dumb) it delivers, with more robot-on-robot carnage, bigger explosions (including, supposedly, the biggest committed to celluloid), bigger characters, more gimmicks, more Transformer character moments, set piece after set piece.

Sadly it also suffers from sequelitis - like the Pirates sequels, they've attempted to simply cram too much into the movie and the flaws are also amplified - the humor's coarser and dumber, the plot's even slighter and even more fragmented and directionless, the Transformers feel even more like extras than the focus of the movie (this time it's the Autobots who barely get any screen-time other than to pop up to blow stuff up) and the Transformers are even more gimmicky and messy in their designs.

The movie's particular flaw is that it's simply 30-40 minutes too long. There's a lot of fat in the film that exists purely to serve Bay's particular tastes and it would have been served better by allowing a ruthless script editor to chop several sequences (the Egyptian chase scene, the Pretender, several other sequences that just drag way too long) and after building nicely for the first half hour, it suddenly flags.

There's things to be proud of, though. The action sequences suffer less from shakey cam this time around and, in particular, Optimus has some epic battles which get the adrenaline pumping, the Megatron/Starscream dynamic is pure G1 and some of the new characters are fun and fully realized (I was entertained way more than I should have been by the foul mouthed Wall-E parody and the cranky old Brit Jetfire, shaking his cane and shouting "bollocks!" every few minutes). Kevin Dunn and Julie White as Sam's parents are even funnier this time around in expanded roles and also show the real acting chops, while John Turturro reins in the excess in his characterisation in the first movie to deliver.

But sadly, Bay also brings on board characters that rival Jar Jar Binks for "comic" ethnic stereotyping, lowbrow sexual humour (did we really need humping dog sequences? Not just once, but pulling the same trick twice?) and occasionally falls into the trap that no action movie should, but the Pirates sequels particularly were equally guilty of - the film gets boring. As another reviewer has put it: "It feels a bit like watching someone else play a video game for two and a half hours." I'm sure Bay had fun blowing things up for the movie but when that's the sole trick, it soon gets tired.

But by turns Revenge Of The Fallen is spectacular, funny, incredibly cringe-worthy, exciting, tedious, incomprehensible, dumb and very occasionally smart and well performed sometimes all at the same time.

If you liked that experience first time around, you're almost guaranteed to like it the second. If you hated the first movie, I'd suggest that a three hour root canal might be the quieter and less painful option.

Comments

[julia-sevin.livejournal.com]

Thanks, good to know what to expect. My husband the G1 zealot had so many issues with the first, he was blinded to its strengths (admittedly, it's a short list). I expect he'll find the sequel likewise groanworthy. I think the first one's fun but I don't look forward to the bloat you describe here.

Ultimately the Michael Bay viewer experience seems to consist of nibbling at long strings of base (though often very good) humor while waiting out tedious segments of trashy storytelling, all in the hopes that some shit's gonna 'splode across the screen in an impressive manner. And it always does. So we keep coming back.

[kirke-novak.livejournal.com]

I have just returned from the movie. I was eating popcorn for 2,5 hours (I really hate popcorn but this one was good) and going :O and XD, and wanting to shout "DON'T MESS WITH THE TWINS!" (I didn't, I'm way too polite ^^;). Incredibly entertaining, plus, they really gayed up John Turturro's character to the max.

Your review clearly shows that you are jealous of Michael Bay's awesomeness. Because he is awesome. And you are jealous how awesome he is.

Have I mentioned that Michael Bay is awesome? He did.

[angelophile.livejournal.com]