REVIEW: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Let’s be truthful for a second. If you need to read a review to decide whether or not you’re going to see Michael Bay’s latest big-boom opus, this movie is not for you.

There are three things people will focus on when they’re talking about “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” – how’s the action, is Megan Fox still ridiculously hot, and why is the movie so bloody long?

The first two are easy. The action in “Fallen” is top-notch, for the most part. Bay is notorious for ramping up the levels of testosterone with every successive flick, and “Fallen” is a thrill ride that doesn’t slow down from the first minute of past the title card. During the final set piece, it was almost too much to handle, and the viewer almost gets battle fatigue from the multiple combat scenes (robot vs. robot, and human vs. robot). It’s a great cacophonous smorgasbord, which might leave you feeling burned out before it’s all said and done.

(As an aside, a couple of attendees of the advance screening still hold Bay’s “Bad Boys 2″ as the bellwether standard for the action flick – or, as they put it, “action porn.”)

Secondly, yes. Megan Fox is still hot. Fox claims “this movie’s not about acting,” and Bay gives her little else to do but run behind Shia LeBoeuf and scream his name, or drape herself over a motorcycle and give young lads their gold metal bikini moment. It’s a shame, really. Bay, along with screenwriters Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, had an opportunity to make Fox into a bona fide action heroine in the vein of Sigorney Weaver or Keira Knightly – and I truly think she’s got the chops to hold her own in such a role. Instead, apart from a goofy side plot involving a Decepticon in a box, Fox is highly attractive window dressing.

At least Fox screams well. When Shia LeBoeuf screams (“Bumblebee!” “Optimus!” “Mykela!”), he screams like a schoolgirl with a skinned knee. LeBoeuf bulked up a bit for the role, and is a lot more tolerable than his last turn as Sam Witwicky, or as Mutt Williams in “Indiana Jones and the Passed Torch.”

Now, as to the length of “Fallen” – with a run time of 2 hours, 30 minutes, it falls in line with the current trend of today’s longer, big-budget films. I don’t have a problem with long movies. “The Dark Knight,” clocking in at 2:32, was paced as a taut thrill ride and didn’t feel like it was bloated at all. You simply can’t say that about “Fallen,” though. When the movie tries to introduce a new antagonist like a snooty governmental watchdog into the mix, you know all he’s going to do is get pushed aside when his concerns about the Autobots being a threat to homeland security only make matters worse. LeBoeuf’s new college roommate, who inexplicably winds up along for the ride, serves only two purposes in the plot, and one of them is to scream even girlier than Sam.

Bottom line: if you’re going to make a movie that runs that long, the audience doesn’t need to be looking at their collective watches, wondering how long until the climactic robot battle.

Yes, it took me 500 words to get to the robots in disguise, the reason the movies were made to begin with. And yes, Virginia, the robots are bigger, more plentiful, and presented better than in the first “Transformers” outing. My biggest complaint from the first movie was, when the Autobots were fighting the Decepticons, it was nigh impossible to follow the fight. With so many moving parts and CG detail on the robots, and so little to differentiate between the good and bad robots, the fight scenes wound up being less interesting. This time around, the CG detailing is much clearer, and the fight sequences are drawn better. I could go into horrifying detail on “the Twins,” a pair of Autobots following our heroes around that come perilously close to Jar Jar Binks territory, but I’ll chock that up to a concession for the kids (who will, likely, love the trash-talking buggers).

Overall, while it’s an overblown festival of explosions and robotic fisticuffs, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” does what it sets out to do: provide a summer blockbuster that, once you remove your brain and leave it at the door, will give you a 2.5 hour diversion from reality. Bada big boom.