Rating: MM

The first review originally written for Maz’s Movie Memorandum, of Michael Bay’s sequel to his 2007 summer box-office smash, Transformers.

Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Shia La Beouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro
Running Time: 150 mins

As with most Michael Bay films and its predecessor, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is expectedly a triumph of style over substance. The film opens with a frenetic action sequence which gives way to some pleasing lighter scenes, involving the loveable (if somewhat unlikely) hero Sam Witwicky and his family. However, these scenes and other more character-driven moments seem few and far between in a film that is almost entirely composed of explosions and clouds of scattered dust.

Having said this though, the film is good solid summer fare, with a few witty lines here and there and enough charm to keep the audience interested. Where the film falls down however, is in the deployment of a troublesome third act, in which the film loses all sense of pace (the film feels 45 minutes too long) and in fact, narrative trajectory; it takes a monologue of exposition from a new old-man transformer (found and re-awoken by the protagonists at a visit to the Smithsonian Museum, of Night at the Museum 2 fame) to make things clear – a lack of clarity and obscure plot that this film shares with the original, something that Bay and his writers clearly haven’t managed to improve upon, despite a seemingly infinite budget. This, it appears has been spent entirely on visual effects, all of which are admittedly stunning, but are nothing we haven’t seen before.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen demonstrates that in a franchise, both premise and characters need an element of freshness to really succeed. Shia La Boeuf returns as Sam, a likeable enough character, but with far less to do than in the first Transformers film which certainly gave La Beouf more scope to develop the role. Perennial men’s magazine favourite Megan Fox also reprises her role of Sam’s love interest Mikaela, but seems to appear only in the capacity of the token gorgeous girl, wearing skimpy shorts and running around screaming for her boyfriend – her only saving grace being that she can hot-wire a car.

In this second outing of the Transformers franchise there seems to be far less dialogue between characters and much more time given to gratuitous action sequences with more transformers than one can really keep up with. And keeping up appears a hard task – in fact truthfully, staying focused is harder, as the film really does suffer from being just that bit too long. In all, for a summer blockbuster there is enough to keep audiences happy, but only just.

Rating: MM (add another if you’re a fan of the toys/cartoon)