God, where to start?
I don't see much reason to bother with a cogent review, since it's been picked clean by snarkers and critics since its release. I was expecting the movie to suck, but no way I could have expected .
The original was passibly watchable drek, even if it was essentially the wet dream of an especially nerdy 13-year old. This movie, if we can even call it that, is the wet dream of a six year old geek who still plays with his Transformers toys. It's a two-and-a-half hour toy commercial/Army recruitment video/barrage of bizarre stereotypes, racist and otherwise, without a single redeeming feature.
This isn't the most original way of going about this, but this film does not deserve a coherent review, merely an angry rant.
Twenty-Five Reasons Why Transformers 2 Blows:
25. It's two and a half hours long.
24. I spilled hot chocolate on my groin while watching it.
23. Ditzy mom on pot brownies.
22. The "Egypt" scenes are filmed in Wadi Rumm, Jordan (see below). From there, they have to go to Jordan. So they're filming in Jordan pretending they're in Egypt but have to go to Jordan. Thanks for completely fucking up my sense of geography.
21. Michael Bay's Epic Swooshy Camera. If I see one more "epic" spinning helicopter shot of badly-rendered computer-generated robots punching each other while Megan Fox's cleavage wiggles in the shockwave of an explosion, I will hunt you down and kill you.
20. Bumblebee, quit spewing random soundbytes at me. It ceased being funny the first time you did it in the first movie.
19. Gay dogs.
18. John Turturro's black assistant butcher with the huge gaped-teeth. Starting to sense a pattern here.
17. That random shot of a Decepitcon ripping an American flag off a bridge in New York City. What.
16. The Decepticons discussing how they should no longer hide themselves while standing on top of a New York skyscraper in full view of everyone with a pair of functioning eyeballs.
15. The point-of-view shot of the Allspark fragment burrowing through a table and the floor. Which is repeated with variations at least a dozen times in the movie. Who thinks this is cool anymore, forchrissakes!?!
14. "Let's see what's on your mind!" Said as the Decepticons are searching for something implanted in Sam's brain. Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!! Funny.
13. Characters from the first movie (the two soldiers, John Turturro) being brought back for little or no reason. Plus Sam's annoying and pointless room mate. Which brings us nicely to...
12. John Turturro's asscheeks. My God, the pain!
11. I know the US has arguably violated international law in invading Iraq, but don't you think China, Egypt and Jordan might have something to say about our deploying heavily-armed special to wage warfare in downtown Shanghai, around the Great Pyramids, or in the ruins at Petra? Oh well, why spoil the beauty of the thing with legality?
10. Transforming skank robot/rip-off of Terminator 3. Remember when I mentioned it being a six year old's wet dream? Yeah.
9. A depiction of college life that makes Animal House look like a documentary. The dance I went to first weekend of freshman year was in a little room with a leopard skin curtain, a few flashy lights, a stereo and twenty people. Here, the freshman intro dance has hundreds of people in a heavily-ornamented room having an amazing degree of fun as if this were a senior prom. Plus college skanks throw themselves on nerd's laps and try to seduce them. Damn, I knew there was a reason me and Liz broke up!
8. Little robots, be they the little hacker things, the one that burrowed into Shia LaBeouf's brain, Mosquitobots or robots voiced by Tom Kenny in a bad Joe Pesci impression that hump Megan Fox's leg, are extremely annoying.
7. Optimus Prime and Sam coming back from the dead within five minutes of each other. Jesus Christ movie, could you insult my intelligence any more? Oh yeah - you can also have "What you're looking for was inside you all the time!" bullshit thrown in for good measure.
6. Megan Fox, the world's biggest skank. And no, she's not hot either.
5. The racist Negrobots who do nothing except Step'n'fetchit-level race jokes and slightly damage one of the Decepticons. The worst part is that these guys are supposed to be "elite" fighters brought to Earth specifically to fight Decepticons. Or to provide comic relief for the mentally atrophied.
4. Shia LaBeouf, making a conscious career-decision to act like a nerdy chimp on crack instead of nurturing his acting talent to a reasonable degree.
3. No one who ever lived on Earth ever talked like anyone in a Transformers film, be it the obnoxious parents or Shia LaBeouf's stumbling-yet-witty nerd or the whacked-out superfluous room mate character or John Turturro. Period.
2. The basic premise of the movie. "Based on Hasbro's Series of Action Figures" indicates we're not watching Citizen Kane, but it also indicates where this movie went wrong. It's computer-generated robots wrestling with each other, with an occasional scene of poor excuses for "human beings" allegedly interacting. You can't get me that interested in watching blatantly fake pixels fight each other. Least of all for two-and-a-half hours.
1. Using Wadi Rumm as a prominent location. This means that I can never watch Lawrence of Arabia again without thinking of giant robot testicles.
Hell, I can never watch a film again without thinking of John Turturro's asscheeks.
Thank you, Michael Bay.
And there you have it! Move over, Batman and Robin and Howard the Duck, you've got company!
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