Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

Michael Bay's remit for this sequel appears to have been "the first one, just more so" and that's exactly what it is. More explosions, more masturbating over the Yank army, more "plot" padding out the time between giant robots battering each other. It certainly is more so.

And yet somehow it feels less.

Don't get me wrong, the first Transformers is by no means a great film, but it is enjoyable, explodey summer fluff. And that bludgeoning direction of Bay's even kind of works in the context. Plus the robot effects are bloody excellent. All that's present and correct here as well but it doesn't feel as impressive. There are some bloody amazing sequences, all shot through with Bay's own patented Confuso-vision, but at no point does the film knock you sideways the way the original did. It lacks the crucial "wow factor". Plus the main problems with the first one are also back, and like everything else they're also "more so". The plot is pure crap. Now, I'm not expecting something to rival the classics here, but it could at least rival the first film's story about, er... finding some spectacles on eBay or something. It seriously is a bit rubbish, even for a whammo, blammo movie. That sense of confusion as to what's actually going on and which character is which is also present, thanks to Bay's aforementioned habit of having so much go on it's actually impossible for the human eye to comprehend it all. Too often it feels like the camera is sitting too close to the big robot fights, possibly done to show off how flawless the admittedly fantastic effects work is, but you may as well be watching the ones and zeros that constitute the fighters for the good it does. Also making an unwelcome return is the strangely childish sense of humour that led to a joke in the first one involving an Autobot pissing on John Turturro. How do you top that? Here's a Decepticon's testicles swinging in your face, will that do?

Then there are the "comic relief" characters. Sam's parents return and manage to grate, especially the whole Mum getting stoned because even though she's clearly the right age to have been around in the 60's she doesn't know what hash is, but they are not the worst. Not by a long shot. Added to them we get a couple of Autobot twins, sorry I didn't catch their names and I'm not a Transformers geek, who are a stereotypical redneck and some faux-hip-hop speech spewing arse respectively. But that's not all as there's also Sam's college room mate, a conspiracy theorist sure about the existence of the Transformers who's only function appears to be to scream, cry and get hit in the nuts. Be thankful then for Turturro's double turn as the returning Simmons and as the voice of the decrepit Jetfire. The worst character though is Tyrese Gibson's Epps who's only functions appear to be a) spouting dialogue that "comments" on what's happening, but not in a clever, fourth-wall cracking sort of way, rather in a "hey isn't that politician a bit of a dick" style, and b) to be the token black character in an otherwise all-white film. In fact when other non-American nationalities appear they only do through a "this is how Americans imagine you to be" filter. If a Scottish character was in it he'd probably be a real-life Groundskeeper Willy.

In fact the biggest bugbear is how "pro-American" the whole thing is. As much as it supposedly is a film that is designed to in no way illicit a single thought from the viewer that's not strictly the case. It's very clear Iraq and the "War on Terror" loom large over this. There's just a bit too much "look at how fucking great all this big army shit is, look at how efficiently we can kill people who don't agree with us". At times it feels like the film's a recruitment video for the army, making dieing in a sandy sweatbox look kind of fun.

Maybe I'm looking for too much. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a two and a half hour mess, with a storyline that doesn't so much unravel as just explode in your face at intermittent intervals. The effects are indeed amazing, maybe the best you'll see to date, but having them shoved at you constantly deadens their impact until it's just a big jumble of colour and sound dancing about in front of you. So pretty much just like the first one then, but, you know, more so.