IT was hard to tell what had actually transpired during Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen after enduring its prolonged 150-minute running time.
The 2007 breakout smash hit Transformers not only rejuvenated director Michael Bay’s flagging career after 2005’s panned The Island, it also breathed some life into the traditional American summer blockbuster with its mix of comedy, romance, integrated CG visuals and intense action sequences.
Revenge of the Fallen picks up about a year after the events of the first film.
The ‘good’ transformers, the Autobots, are now working alongside the American military to help save the world from further attacks from the ‘bad’ transformers, the Decepticons.
It is good timing, because the Decepticons’ evil leader Megatron (Hugo Weaving) has teamed up with an even more unpleasant transformer, the Fallen, in a plot to destroy all Autobots.
Meanwhile, the franchise’s hero, all-American teenager Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is preparing to move out of his kooky parents home and go to college, leaving behind his mechanic (and men’s magazine pin-up) girlfriend, the pouty Mikaela (Megan Fox).
However, Witwicky realises he isn’t free of his obligations to the transformers just yet when he accidentally discovers the remaining part of the all-powerful cube that was destroyed at the end of the first film.
This fragment offers much power to the Decepticons’ new master plan, and as such, a bizarre overtly sexual student – who appears as if she was told that she was in the sequel to Species, not Transformers – stalks Witwicky at his new university.
This plot build-up occurs over the course of the first hour and then we are left with 90 minutes of amazingly well animated but poorly integrated special effects, bad acting, unfunny one-liners and no real clue to why what is happening on screen is actually happening.
From the Smithsonian Museum to ancient Egypt, we follow our hero and his almost mute-like girlfriend and a couple of new tagalongs, but there is often no explanation for the change of scenery and action.
Often, more time is spent glamorising the arsenal of the US military, rather than focusing on the plot and action at hand.
Where there was a sense of cheek and playfulness with the transformers in the first film, it appears to be completely lost here.
Ultimately, this is louder, bigger, brasher and more idiotic than anything else that has been released this year; a hollow shell of a movie more concerned with marketing the US military than offering audiences some of the delightful carefree charm that made the first Transformers such a success.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (M)
Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel
Rating: one-and-a-half stars (150 mins)
Opens: June 24