AUTOBOTS, ROLLOUT!

4/5

I apologize that it took so long for me to actually finish this review. I saw the movie midnight opening night and have since seen it two more times...

Transofmers: Revenge of the Fallen slowly unfolds as Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) is preparing to go off to college and moving past his days with the Transformers. However, before he leaves his house he discovers a shard of the cube that was destroyed in the first movie. Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) has been hard at work partnering with a secret agency called NEST, which is being led on the ground by Major Lennox (Josh Duhamel). There mission is to find and destroy any Decepticons on planet Earth. The Decepticons know that there is still knowledge of the cube and that Sam has it. We follow Sam, Mikaela (Megan Fox), Agent Simmons (John Turturro) and Leo (Ramon Rodriguez) as they try to unlock the meaning of the knowledge imparted to Sam by the cube shard. Along the way we are teamed up with familiar faces as well as quite a few new ones.

One of the big complaints that I shared with many viewers of the first movie was the choreography and cinematography for the Transformer's fight scenes. Most of these scenes were filmed too closely and chaotically, which made it feel as though we were watching a bunch of scrap metal being smashed together. This complaint was fully remedied in Revenge of the Fallen. The many fight scenes are more well choreographed and also shot from a much wider perspective. This made them feel much more epic and helped show the massive nature of these alien robots.

Not all is well in this Transformers movie. Transformers, which finds it's roots in cartoons, should be a family friendly movie. I do understand that their target demographic is getting older and doesn't need the censorship that a younger audience should be given. However, I found myself being taken aback at the language in a number of scenes. Openly and unsurprisingly Hollywood is become more and more lax in their rating system. Though the language that I speak of isn't terribly strong, we must remember that this will be viewed by a large number of younger children who are quite impressionable by the characters they find inspiring or funny. The comic relief provided by "The Twins", Mudflap and Skids (voiced by Reno Wilson and Tom Kenny respectively), was at times filled with strong language. The "adult" content wasn't limited to the language either. There was some very strong sexual tension and not so subtle innuendo in a number of the earlier scenes. Both of these elements of the movie could have been approached in much different ways, especially considering the wide age range of the viewers. These two things did leave a slightly bad taste in my mouth.

I thought it was wonderful, however, that the Transformers moved in the direction of their origins by incorporating some (in my opinion) much needed smack talk during the fight scenes. This was a big part of the cartoons. Many of the characters would keep running their mouths as they were beating down or getting beat down. My personal favorite scene was one that had many of it's shots pulled into the trailers. Optimus Prime is fighting three separate Decepticons in a sparsely wooded area. The choreography and cinematography are near perfect and the dialogue is delightful. At one moment after felling his opponent Optimus Prime remarks, "Piece of tin." I found the addition of this smack talk to be delightful and moved the live action movies closer to the heart of the cartoons.

Pros:
Light hearted and full of action. Though the beginning is a bit slower in it's development once the action starts it doesn't give much room for breathing until the end of the movie. Although not an amazing script there are some wonderful lines delivered by some of the lead characters. One such line was quite powerful and moved me beyond the movie, "Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing."

Cons:
Stronger than necessary language and sexual innuendo that was too strong for a movie with viewers of all ages. The movie left us almost exactly where we were when the first movie ended. Though this isn't a terrible thing, it just seems a bit lazy on the writers part. None of the Transformers, aside from two Autobots and two Decepticons, get much development or depth. If the Transformers are too be recognized as alien beings and not just robots they should have been treated with more respect as far as character development is concerned. Michael Bay has a strange affinity of circling the camera around his characters (go back and watch any of his previous films, he's done it in nearly all of them) this was not only pointless and done too many times, but in one scene I found my self reaching for a trash can. Lastly, although the CGI was very impressive the human/robot interactions were very poorly executed. I've seen many movies with much more convincing real/cgi interactions, they also had much smaller budgets.

Bottom Line:
EPIC! Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen doesn't fall victim to the all too common sequel short comings and delivers a funny, action packed powerhouse that will eat up all of it's summer competition. Michael Bay brings back two of the writers from the original Transformers and scores a movie that is bigger, badder and more explosive than the first. The action scenes are intense and satisfying. The CGI is even more impressive than the first and helps bring the Transformers to a level of intimate detail that truly blurs the line between fiction and reality, absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, the character's, both human and Transformer, get lost in the chaos of the action and feel more shallow than I would have liked.