The first notable line of dialogue spoken by a character in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is "Damn, I'm good." This is uttered with baritone bravado by one of the titular machines during an opening battle in Shanghai.
Actually, it's not quite the opening- the film opens some dozen-or-so thousand years ago when primitive man first encounters the enormous, mechanized alien race of transformers.
Cut back to Shanghai in modern times (the cue card helpfully informs that it is in fact "today") and a team of good transformers are working with the U.S. army to search out and kill bad transformers. The monstrous metal creatures generally behave in a vehicular manner, even when in their "natural" form, and the result is that the opening fight sequence (along with every other one in the film) takes on all the charm of a train wreck with incredibly detailed digital sound.
The preposterous, pointless, noisy beginning to the film is bad, to be sure, but it can't hold a candle to what's about to come next. Transformers, with 150 minutes to kill (pun absolutely intended), uses the first forty-five to half-heartedly march through the well worn action-film-sequel cliché of showing us our hero in humorous everyday life situations which we, the audience, secretly know are about to be violently interrupted.
After the opening clangs and booms the film cuts immediately to teenage hero Sam (Shia Laboef) at home preparing to go off to college. We watch as he packs and prepares while his dimwitted mother and father look on, distraught and overjoyed, respectively.
These scenes and the following scenes at college are when director Michael Bay and his screenwriting team decide to do awful, terrible things to the audience. The mere sight of a college campus is ironic considering the fact that all of the humor in these scenes is pitched at (and seemingly written by) twelve-year-olds. Julie White as Sam's mom in particularly pitiable as she is given preposterous lines and actions that Elmer Fudd would turn down on grounds of dignity.
Here's an example of the film's moronic take on a "funny" situation that "could" happen at a college: upon arriving to drop of Sam, his mother is so upset that she purchases some brownies from "the bake sale." Sam's father and he try to warn her not to eat them considering the large, bright green marijuana leaf printed on the bag. This kind of inane scenario (and there are many, many more) feels like the equivalent of being smacked in the face by the screenwriters with a shovel that has "joke!" scrawled on it.
The sequence, which began with us expected to believe that a drug dealer would be dumb enough to sell their brownies in bags with pot leaves on them, ends with Sam's mom running around giggling and loudly imploring girls to meet her son who, she announces (in crude terminology), just lost his virginity. In closing my description of Transformers' beginning, I will leave with two facts: 1- this film was produced by the man who directed Shindler's List, and 2- the college Sam is attending happens to be Princeton University.
After the teeth-pulling-awful college sequence, one finds oneself relieved; nay enraptured, to finally have some action start. We are teased as to coming action by A: quick cuts to satellites in space and evil transformers violating them, B: the development of a scene where an evil transformer (in disguise) violates our hero, and C: a scene where a knee-high transformer expresses his affection for Sam's girlfriend Mickaela (Megan Fox) by, you guessed it, violating her leg.
This scene brings the count of animal (or transformer) humping to three, all used for humor. To make a few more lists out of Transformer's plot (believe me it's more fun than describing it outright) I would say approximately five explosions are slowly run away from; four major cities are brutalized without so much as a sign of a fire truck; two main characters are dragged through that most tired action movie routine of being "killed" only to turn out to be…not killed!
And helicopters? I lost count of the actual number destroyed but I can say that a helicopter pilot in Transformers has got to be the most dangerous fictional film job since Spinal Tap drummer.
So considering the fact that the first Transformers film was a half-decent summer flick; what, if anything, is good in its sequel? Well there are maybe three jokes that actually work. At least two are thanks to character actor John Turturro, who at least seems to know that he's in a profoundly silly movie.
Also Shia LeBoef is fine as the lead, even managing to somewhat hold his own when subjected to a series of scenes in which he (for reasons that escape me) is mentally overcome (violated?) by alien symbols, causing him to go into a cross between an epileptic fit, an episode of demonic possession, and The Stanky Leg. These symbols lead him, as well as the evil "Decepticon" transformers, to Egypt.
Once there the film spends its final hour showing us an army squadron (who our hero and friends are with) and evil transformers spraying bullets and missiles at each other. Elsewhere, for reasons I won't bother to explain, the Great Pyramid of Giza is being violated by a massive Decepticon. I have never in recent memory been less interested or convinced of a blockbuster's action scenes. And I saw Stealth.
Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen is overwrought, grating, insulting, stupid, messy, ridiculous, and much too long. A good blockbuster (like the recent Star Trek) leaves its audience thrilled, excited, satisfied, and even a little breathless. After Transformers 2, the only thing that I felt was, to borrow a joke from the film, something that rhymes with shmiolated.
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