Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Editorial

Director Michael Bay's first and only sequel since Bad Boys 2 is, like that film, marked by swaggering confidence, wild excess and a string of bad-taste jokes. Dogs hump each other, robots hump human legs and the camera spends so much time ogling Megan Fox's torso you start to wonder if it's being operated by a 13 year-old boy. There are now 42 robots.

It all looks good on paper. But it's a case of same meal, bigger portion, with the flaws of the first not only present but accentuated. You'll be even more hard pressed at the end of this one to remember which robot's which and few get more than a scene before Bay's attention flits elsewhere. Even the Fallen, an Emperor figure to Megatron's Darth Vader, who can hurl tanks around with the aid of his jagged staff, is only blandly nefarious.

The plot, meanwhile, is as baffling as before, not only bringing back the abstruse Allspark but throwing in a new MacGuffin called the ‘Matrix of Leadership'. It tries harder to be funny but is actually less so, despite Shia LaBeouf working some early new-kid-on-campus schtick, Rainn Wilson amusing in a single scene as a rock-star astronomy teacher, and John Turturro doing an entertaining reprise of MIB wannabe Simmons.

What saves it, just about, are the effects. At times the frame is so packed with whirring cogs and twirling cranks that you could replicate the effect by staring at the innards of a domestic appliance, but when they duke it out, the images are often so screwy it's impossible to do anything but sit and stare.

It's just a shame there aren't more ideas behind the spectacle, since we're not given much in the way of compelling reasons to root for one pixelly pugilist over another.

Nick Semlyen

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