TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN.

This is my personal opinion, but I think the haters are hating too much, but the lovers might also be loving a bit too much, as well. The sequel picks up two years after the last, and Sam (Shia LaBeouf) is going off to college. His girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) doesn't like being so far away, but Sam will find ways to keep in touch. And Sam's personal guardian transformer, Bumblebee, just feels left out. But after Sam finds a piece of the Allspark, he starts seeing a bunch of weird symbols that link to this... machine thingy... that there was this civil war over forever ago between the Autobot and Decepticon ancients. So The Fallen wants to use it, but can't because there's a Prime on the Earth? And... okay, I'm just gonna stop there.

I really have no f**king idea what the plot of this movie is. Hell, the characters even beg for a plot at one point in the movie (courtesy of John Turturro). Literally. He yells at one of the transformers to just lay out the plot already because nothing makes sense. And even afterwards, it still doesn't make sense. I don't know if it was just because I missed it or it was explained poorly, but I didn't even know what the big machine thing was supposed to do until the end of the film. And even after it's explained, I was still left with "um... okay... because that makes sense" thoughts. There are quite a few non-sensical things (or things with just poor reasonings behind them) in this movie. And it takes at least half the movie (and it's a long movie) before anything remotely plot-related occurs.

Much like the first film, entire scenes or even characters could have been removed completely. The "twins" were pretty unnecessary (and oftentimes annoying), and Leo, when not reminding me of a younger Kevin Corrigan, was just there for comic relief. However, despite his overall pointlessness, he was still an entertaining character, so he really didn't bother me at all.

Another place this movie "falls" is in character development. Outside Shia and Megan's characters, everybody else (including returning characters), are more like set pieces. Bumblebee and Optimus Prime are really the only returning Autobots that actually do anything for any portion of the movie (or are built-up, rather). The others are just kinda there. And the new ones hardly get enough screen time to matter (even those that do--the twins--you wish you had less of). Every character outside Shia and Megan's are so flat they'd almost be pointless if their story 'archs' (if you can call them that) weren't necessary to the 'plot' (if you can call it that).

The acting is decent, though... except from Megan Fox, who is just there for the T&A. And what lovely T&A it is (there's even a slow-mo Baywatch-esque running sequence).

I know this sounds like hating, but despite all of that negativity, I still enjoyed myself. Why? Because the action and special effects were good. The haters hate the movie because of the aforementioned things, of course. But what they also don't realize is that they're going in to a Transformers movie... as directed by Michael Bay. It's basically Robots & Explosions: The Movie. But I knew that going in. So knowing that, and still seeing it, I wasn't really disappointed. I didn't go in expecting Oscar-worthy plots and characters. I saw giant robots fighting each other and blowing crap up. That's what I went to see, and the movie delivered. Case closed.

Still, is it a good movie? Not really. But is it entertaining (even on a braindead level)? Heck yeah. So taking all things into consideration, including the outstanding visual effects (though even those had a few hiccups), I think I can give it a pretty fair score as a non-biased, knows-what-he's-getting-into source.


I Am McLovin!

EAGLE EYE.

So what we have here is a fairly entertaining action movie with some logic issues. After the death of Jerry Shaw’s (Shia LaBeouf) twin brother, Jerry goes home to find his place covered with military things that point to him being a terrorist. Meanwhile, Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) is a single mother via divorce whose son is going on a big train ride to Washington D.C. in order to play the trumpet in a junior orchestra. Then suddenly both of them get calls: Jerry to escape from the FBI, and Rachel to do as she’s told unless she wants her son to die by having the train derail. After them both are military officer, Zoe Perez (Rosario Dawson); Defense Secretary Callister (Michael Chiklis); and FBI Agent Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton). So the rest of the movie is a big chase scene with cool tech-related things getting them through situations while the mysterious woman’s voice commands them to certain places at certain times. And sometimes they aren’t even alone in their journey.

The coolest part about the movie was the action. A lot of stuff reminded me of the really awesome movie The Game, except with more tech-related things happening. There was a great car chase sequence… hell, there was great everything with the action. But one thing that bugged me about it was that there could be so many different horrendous car wrecks, but only one time in the movie (when it was plot-necessary) did it actually affect any character. They would get up and walk or run around with sometimes not even a scratch.

On the subject of illogic happenings, one of the biggest issues I had with the movie was one that the whole plot rested on: the train trip of Rachel’s son. Seriously, what kind of train ride lasts almost two freakin days? And not to mention in that time span, they only slept once and didn’t have a total body failure from all the running around? I suppose, though, adrenaline could be part of the latter.

On the acting side of things, I think everybody did really well. Shia and Billy Bob were the best. It was so refreshing to see Billy Bob in something that wasn’t a dark comedy lately. And just imagining Shia going from Even Stevens to this is an amazing thought in and of itself, so I commend him there.

The story was a bit out there, though, but I don’t want to go into the story too much, as it could spoil quite a bit. There’s a nice twist halfway through that for whatever reason I didn’t expect. Maybe at one point, but I didn’t follow the trail of that thought. I did like the fact that they made the movie show the bad sides of the government instead of having some underlying theme of patriotism like any other movie dealing with terrorism would. Maybe that’s why a lot of those stuffy, old, conservative critics didn’t care for the movie, eh?

Honestly, to me, the movie was a fun time. Things about the story could have been tweaked a bit to fit better, but otherwise it was a really fun action movie. I could give two movies that I could say “Combine these and you’d have this movie,” but then that’d give it away. Let’s just say one of them is The Game… but I can’t tell you the other until you’ve seen it. And I do recommend it if you don’t mind going out for some action-packed fun and aren’t easily annoyed by logical issues. So yeah… good times.

A Keanu 'Whoa'