The Pacer

Issue date: 5/14/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment

In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Michael Bay has created a film that will do little more than waste your money, your time and your patience.

With his first year of college fast approaching, Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) is once again thrust into the center of the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Optimus Prime and the other Autobots have formed a joint taskforce with the United States and together they hunt down the Decepticons hidden around the planet. When the Decepticons resurrect Megatron, it's up to Sam and the Autobots to stop them.

The plot is slightly more detailed than this, but overall the story is extremely bland and horribly predictable. At times, it feels as if the movie is just making it up as it goes along, referring to past summer blockbusters to provide a blue print for the plot. You can count on plenty of "slow-motion running through explosions" scenes, and it felt like that was all the last thirty minutes of the movie was.

The average moviegoer, however, does not come to see this movie for the plot.

Even Transformers knows not to take itself too seriously.

Transformers is, from the outset, nothing more than an effects powerhouse to please the ear and the eye, but the movie fails to be noticeably bigger and better than the first. The majority of the big battle scenes were featured in the trailers and TV spots in the months leading up before the film's release, so you've already seen what there really is to see.

You can count on plenty of scenes with Megan Fox, but unfortunately, her character simply fills the role of on-screen eye candy. Likewise, none of the characters in the story seemed to develop, and were there simply to enhance the CG robots that everyone came to see.

To accompany a bland story and ho-hum visual effects, Transformers took several poor attempts at humor that may have been appreciated by the twelve year old kids in the audience.

Sam's mom eating a weed brownie and repeated scenes of dry humping are two examples of the "original" humor in Transformers. As if it couldn't get any better, Michael Bay has already come under fire for racial stereotypes found in two secondary characters.

In the end, Revenge of the Fallen accomplishes what it set out to do: take your money and give you two hours of explosions.

Indeed, at the time this article is being written, RotF has already turned over a cool $60 million on its Wednesday opening, and is second only to last year's The Dark Knight in opening day sales. Once again, a movie was made not to be good, but it was simply made to make money.

Mission accomplished.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Terminator Salvation and now Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen comprises 2009's crap list.

As it now looks, Star Trek was the only decent blockbuster to see this summer, and hopefully it will be joined by Half-Blood Prince when it releases July 15.

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