Jonzor's Movie Review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Michael Bay took me a little too literally...
Jonzor - wrote on 07/01/09

Before I get too far into this, I'm going to direct you to read my review of the previous Transformers movie, just so you know where I'm coming from when I talk about this movie.

Now that you've (probably not) done that, let me say that this movie cured my #1 problem with the first movie: not enough robot action. This movie had Transformers fighting each other in spades, and I loved every minute of it. I was literally 8 years old again and Optimus Prime was my hero. I also have this thing about enjoying it when a villian really gets what's coming to them. And I don't just mean that they get beat and the good guys win... I mean like... when the bad guys get ripped into tiny little pieces and you don't have to wonder if that character is going to be back in the sequel. I enjoy the satisfaction that comes from watching the bad guys go down, and go down hard. This movie was especially satisfying on that front.

However, Michael Bay didn't just stop at dialing up the action in Revenge of the Fallen. This movie is the previous one on steroids riding on the top of a missle with the boom box blaring "Welcome to the Jungle". A lot of people have talked about how this movie is eye candy, and while that's true, I don't feel that it properly sums up the movie.

This movie isn't just more action than the first... it's more EVERYTHING than the first. In the case of the action, that's a good thing, 'cause the action is top-notch. But in other areas, that's not such a good thing. More akward sex jokes (oh man... so many more...), more over-the-top exaggerations of characters (the mother comes to mind especially), more comic relief (like... in every scene), and even(depending on how policially correct you are or aren't) more racisim!

I'm not trying to go all ACLU on the movie, here, but I think that there's a point where if you're writing dialogue for a character you have to acknowledge the fact that just because it's not a literal "black human being" on screen saying it doesn't mean that it can't be stereotypical and racist.

The bottom line, though, is that I really enjoyed this movie. Even though I thought the jokes were a little too plentiful, I still laughed. Even though the movie was 2 and 1/2 hours long, I didn't get bored. Even though I spent my entire review complaining (almost), trust me, I'll be buying this DVD on day one.

This is a guilty pleasure in every sense of the word.