Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Stunningly stupid, mind numbing in its incoherence, laughably loud and punishingly long at 2½ hours, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen aims squarely at angry, sexually-stunted preadolescent boys and their taller, older counterparts. Using plot as pretext—human-friendly alien Autobots and dastardly Decepticons duke it out for planet Earth—the movie is mostly about ballistics, military hardware, metal, macho and Megan Fox running in jiggly slo-mo.

As if director Michael Bay’s oeuvre (Armageddon, Bad Boys) didn’t already sound clear warnings, this second Transformers is so hyperactive yet deadly-dull that it cries out for someone in Bay’s inner circle to swap out his stash of Red Bull for chill pills. In the movie’s first 10 minutes or so, amiable hero Shia LaBeouf gets reluctantly sent off by his cartoon parents to a cartoon college that teems with hot coeds out of a dweeb frat boy’s anime stash. LaBeouf and hot, pouty, expression-challenged mechanic girlfriend Megan Fox yammer about whether or not they’re equipped for a long-distance relationship and, frankly, we couldn’t care less because the costars have zero chemistry—and besides, we came to see giant robots shape-shift and kick butt. And then that’s just what the big robots do (and they’re even flashier and more complicated than in the first movie), and that’s all they continue to do for the next two hours. Bay apparently gets his rocks off shooting sequences about blowing up a school, a library, a museum and architectural world wonders—you know, symbols of grown-up culture and achievement.

The movie, which peaks midway through its action orgy, grazes its plot inspirations from Indiana Jones and Terminator here, a little E.T. and Peter Pan there, with occasional timeouts for otherwise talented costars like John Turturro, Ramon Rodriguez, Kevin Dunn and Julie White to try and out-do each other in shameless mugging. Still, they’re underachievers compared to the pair of annoying jive-talking Autobots that make Jar Jar Binks seem like a laugh riot. For movie fans desperate for good, big, stupid fun, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen should be a competition-crusher, but only because of sheer brute force.