The Peanut Gallery Reviews ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’

This movie is an excellent study in “poetry in motion”: It is a magnificent art piece merging William Shakespeare with Iraq, John Milton with Platoon. There’s a strong Shakespearian quality to the love triangle presented in this movie. We have Megan Fox as the beautiful Mikaela, a Desdemona like woman forever loyal to her Othello, better known as Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky. Causing disorder in their perfect relationship – aside from the massive otherworldy conflict between warring clans of autonomous robot organisms exhibiting strongly duality overtones – is the marginally evil-hearted Wheelie, through his aggressive sexual gyrations on Mikaela’s right leg. Some may call this “humping.”

…Okay, so there’s a Decepticon humping scene (notably doing EXACTLY what every male in the audience wanted to do to Megan Fox to begin with)…and a dog humping scene (probably a personification of what every female in the audience thought of the men)…If you’ve come to this movie expecting anything aside from summer movie trash, then you – not Michael Bay – are the moron.

Things Michael Bay is NOT qualified for: writing Pearl Harbor films, directing small budget films, performing open heart surgery, directing Pearl Harbor films, directing a Broadway musical, casting actors for Pearl Harbor films, creating a light speed space drive, and anything remotely related to Pearl Harbor films.

Things Michael Bay IS qualified for:

Considering his obsession with one-upping his previous films’ explosions, CGI, military machismo, and utter carnage, I’d have to say the man is the perfect selection for a movie series based around a bunch of gigantic ass robots beating the ugly out of each other while human beings get blown to smithereens in the crossfire. Transformers 2 is complete insanity, total wreckage, and comes with the Michael Baysplosions (TM) seal of approval.

That, and the man clearly listened to his fanbase for this sequel. While the first Transformers movie is deliberately filmed from the prospective of the humans unfortunate enough to be beautiful females and rugged males caught in the bizarro world war zone, Transformers 2 rears the cameras back a few hundred feet and tells the story from scale of the Autobots and Decepticons.

Megatron, Starscream, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and the Autobot Twins all soak up camera time in their cromed out glory and for the most part dominate the film. The characters are also 20 times more badass this go around – especially the yellow camaro and the flaming peterbilt – and capable of ripping each other to shreds much more gore-ishly this time. Humans? They provide mostly comic relief, cannon fodder, and military grunting…and softcore porn-esque sexual posing moments.

Yep. That about sums that up.

This is a SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER THRILLER in all its glory. Michael Bay may not make a deeply significant film, and may use every emotional cliche’ known to man to propel his shoddy plot forward, but the man knows his audience. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen cranks up the insanity and fan servicing, giving you a 2 hour explosion-fest featuring everyone’s favorite robots in disguise…and panty shots from multiple early-20’s female bombshells. What’s not to like?

Final Verdict – 8 of 10 Peanuts