Transformers – Revenge of the sequel

Transformers – Revenge of the Fallen is riding on the coattails of the 2007’s hugely successful Transformers and – as is often the tragic fate of the sequel – doesn’t live up to its predecessor.

The film begins with an update on Sam Witwicky, his inexplicably scantily clad girlfriend Mikaela Banes, their shape-shifting space-robot friends the Autobots and the fate of the Earth.

Optimus Prime and his team have partnered with the US army to take out the remaining Decepticons (evil robots) living on Earth; while teenage smart-mouth Sam is leaving the Los Angeles suburbia of his childhood and onto the manhood that awaits at college. Not two days into lectures Sam is once again called upon to help the Autobots in their fight to save the planet from destruction.

The shoes of the 2007 original were always going to be hard to fill. The movie grossed over $700 million worldwide, wowed critics with its impressive CGI effects, satisfied any 80s nostalgist and spawned a new army of teen Transformers fanboys. Like the student who knows they aced their last test, director Michael Bay and his team have gotten a little lazy with this film.

The first Transformers movie worked because the cast and crew were enjoying the preposterousness of the story; they didn’t take themselves too seriously and had a bit of fun. The plot was simple – bad Decepticons were searching for an energy source on Earth and were prepared to obliterate humanity in the process while nice caring Autobots were here to protect and defeat the evil menace.

Revenge of the Fallen’s plot is a sprawling, meandering mess and takes almost two and a half hours before completion. The robot civil war rages on, but they’ve thrown into the mix an ancient sun destroying machine, Shia LaBeouf suffering alien-maths induced seizures and the return of a fallen mechanical apostle.

The acting is really dreadful and the machines manage to upstage their human counterparts throughout. LaBeouf’s attempt at replicating mental breakdown is laughable. His quick teenage wit served him well in the original when he was an eager boy discovering a race of alien robots, but it really lags in this film. He’s a bit like that guy in school who nobody really liked, and no matter how funny something he said was you absolutely couldn’t laugh because he annoyed you too much. At 23 LaBeouf still needs to earn his leading man status, making out with Megan Fox might get him some man-points but his whiney sarcastic tone (lifted directly from last year’s dreadful Indiana Jones 4) undercuts any likeability he may have had.

As far as Fox is concerned there is no room for acting. Just as the camera pans slowly across the sleek bodywork of the cars, so too does it slowly pan over her sleek bodywork. She is introduced to us provocatively mounted on a motorcycle in a pair of Daisy Dukes working in her father’s grease shop, most of it slathered on her body. Let’s face it, she wasn’t hired for the first film for her keen intellect, and fulfils her duties yet again as the fanboy’s wet dream of a leather-clad, hot wiring, biker chick.

John Turturro returns as Agent Simmons and provides some of the tragically lacking comic relief of the film. The real comedy gem, however, is Sam’s mother played by Julie White. When she barged into her son’s room in the last film asking if he was engaging in “Sam’s happy time” we knew we were onto a winner. Now she’s earns her true comedic stripes rugby tacking college jocks, talking about her son’s cherry and pointing out bald spots on her head. The ever hilarious Rainn Wilson makes a cameo and is absolutely wasted as a sarky college lecturer in one small scene.

The team of Autobots is now expanded. Most likely aware of the misogynistic tone of the last film, the makers have added three lady-bots to the crew who sadly rarely feature. The most offensive addition is the duo of Mudflap and Skids – a pair of jive-talking imbecile robots who could have easily served as Huggy Bear’s idiotic henchmen in an old Starsky and Hutch episode. It’s almost like the film is trying to be a bit offensive, a mini-Decepticon humps Megan Fox’s leg and Sam makes a throwaway comedic remark in a butcher shop about Swine Flu.

It’s not just the acting and the tone that’s problematic; director Michael Bay is being a little too pushy with his audience this time around. Consistently throughout the film, Bay makes some immensely unsubtle nods to his past catalogue of work. The New York skyline is littered with destruction in the style of Armageddon, a giant air craft carrier is blown apart á la Pearl Harbour but the most glaringly obvious reference is the Bad Boys II poster we see on Sam’s college dorm room. It is as if the director is insisting to us that he knows how to make a good action film. Bay bashers beware this is the height of pretentiousness.

The Autobots and Decepticons are not the only shape shifters in the franchise, Bay himself transforms into one of those eager tourist fathers dragging his viewer from place to place. His packed itinerary takes us from the Pyramids to Paris; Nevada to New York all with the intention of wowing the audience who are really there to disconnect and see giant robots battle it out before our eyes.

To its merit, the fight scenes in Revenge of the Fallen are as impressive, if not more so than the original. Given that the combatants are mechanical Bay has been given a lot more freedom with his 12A rating to experiment with some violence. In one staggeringly well constructed robo-battle in a forest Optimus Prime literally tears his foe’s face apart directly to camera. As with the last film the robot fights are unduly hard work to keep up with, telling battling bots apart is often more difficult than the film makers seem to realise. Both sides are, well, metallic and speak with an intense Christian “I gargle thumbtacks and white spirits” Bale voice. Often it doesn’t matter, as the graphics are so near flawless you enjoy the scrap regardless of who’s winning!

The film is clearly shopping for a new audience; however, newcomers to the franchise will be baffled by the relentless use of space robot jargon throughout. Equally kids and young teens will begin to wane an hour and a half in and dedicated fanboys will be disappointed with the divergence from the original tale. Undoubtedly the film will have massive takings at the Box Office due to the last film’s success, but I’m not sure who Bay and co. were trying to please with this film.

The biggest problem is that too much has been crammed in. The extensive locations are breathtaking but overwhelming, the whirling fight scenes and endless explosions are an all-out sensory assault and the acting is trite and clichéd.

Unlike its mechanical main characters, Transformers – Revenge of the Fallen is so much less than the sum of its parts.