It was a cool movie. Besides the fact that if I paid $6.50 for a movie to see giant robots fighting I would expect to, you know, be able to SEE them. Apparently the director (Michael Bay) had an impaired cousin who wanted to run the cameras/SFX department and he had a major visual handicap he wanted to share.
Anyway, for the rest of this I will be talking about Transformers 2. There will be slight spoilers, but I'll try to keep it as loose as possible. Besides, if you really wanted to see it, you would have by now.
It's a good movie, full of robots fighting each other. This time Mr Bay has fired his visually impaired family member for the most part and has allowed us to see a good deal of the fights. If you like that kinda thing (and I most definitely do) this is an awesome movie with some really fun scenes.
Some high points:
Prime is now back to full-on superpower in the Transformers universe. "I'll take you all on." While fighting 2 of the most powerful Decepticons (Megatron and Starscream) and 1 or 2 others (more on that later). EPIC.
Devastator, just awesome. One of the first combiners in the original series (was he the first?), I always wanted this toy as a kid, so it was awesome we got to see him, even though the scenes with him in it had some rather obvious pains for me (again, more on that later)
Sam had some pretty significant character development in this one, which was actually pretty cool. Most people have mixed feelings about the human characters, but I think it's actually a good development, and hey, at least it's not Spike.
The Twins (forgot their names) This has caused a lot of controversy as they are supposed to be interpreted as negative African American stereotypes. I honestly didn't see it. I saw them acting more like suburban white kids acting like gangster rappers, and come on, they turn into the freakin Chevy Beat and Trax. They remind me of my oldest son's whiter than a sheet friends who insisted on wearing "bling" and talking like they were illiterate more than any African American I've ever spoken to. From what I've read, that was the entire point. Blegh, some people want to see something in everything, I suppose. They were funny as hell, and in a way that worked for all the kids I took with me.
Some significant low points:
You remember the girl human, Mikaela, from the first movie? At first you thought she was going to be complete eye candy but at the end of the movie shows her skills for the final battle of the movie. Remember how awesome that was and how it redeemed her character? She runs into the battle to hook up Bumblebee so he can join the fight and actually becomes part of the army fighting the Decepticons? Yeah, well, Mr. Bay basically said screw all that and lets relegate her to being eye candy and sex jokes. She gets humiliated further by having a mini-Decepticon hump her leg when he finds out he can change sides. Kid you not.
She almost looked badass when she tortured the same mini-Decepticon at their first meeting, threatening to take his other eye off after burning the first one off with a torch. And then later in the movie he humps her leg. Yeah, I'm over it now.
The last stand of Optimus (sort of):
Did they introduce the other Decepticons who were fighting Prime in the forest? If so I missed it. However it's kind of annoying that he was fighting 3 or 4 (it's really hard to tell) completely silver angular robots who pretty much look the same unless you take in very tiny details. A little color would have helped a lot. Just a nit-pick, not all that bad, but it's annoying to say, "oh wasn't that cool when Optimus said 'I'll take you all on.' to that group of 4, no wait, 3, no wait 4..."
Devestator (remember how I said I'd get back to him?) is made up of several construction vehicles, two of which have wrecking balls attached. Can you think of the most juvenile visual joke you could make up with just that last sentence? This movie could. And not just in the "did I just see that" kinda way. The virtual camera lingers on that visual joke for a good 5 seconds. It's the visual medium's version of saying "did you get that?" Even my 12 year old cringed at that. This is not American Pie, Borat or Bruno (I refuse to look up how to create umlauts just to refer to that stupid movie), this type of humor is not appreciated in any movie other than one of those LCD types of movies that producers seem to think is popular now.
The human girl transformer. (Let's just call her Sexpot, it sounds like a good Transformer name) Most people had trouble with that concept even though the original series did have this line. The reason no one remember them was that the toy line sucked, they were barely-transforming robots who could crawl into a plastic shell that looked about as human as Optimus in truck mode. That's not my gripe. After a VERY uncomfortable implied near rape scene, we are treated to a full screen pantie shot. The whole scene is just awkward and juvenile and really did nothing to further the movie or the bad reviews it will get for this scene alone.
Some interesting points:
Now in general I was trying to separate the Awesome from the Tacky/Horrible but there are also a few other things worth mentioning.
The crazy agent guy is back from the first, this time as a paranoid conspiracy site manager who has actually seen what he's writing about. He's not quite as over the top as he was in the first (though he does get to chew the scenery a few times) and he actually comes across as funny rather than annoying.
The parents are just as silly as the first but do get some honestly funny lines in. There is a rather ham fisted "all grown up now" theme running with them every time you see them, and I actually teared up at one of the speeches. (I also tear up at Folgers' commercial with the soldier returning home, and the song "What if Jesus Comes Back Like That", so ham fisted works just fine for my sensibilities thank you very much.)
How many robots is/are Arcee anyway? This was confusing as all heck, considering that in the older series she (yes, she was one of a very few Transformers identified as female) was one motorcycle but in this one she appears to be 3 separate shells, but is consistently referred to as one being named "Arcee" Just weird.
Anyway, by the time you finished reading this "review" you probably could have actually watched the movie yourself. It's fun if you like that kind of thing, and definitely worth seeing. If you don't like this kind of thing, there's nothing for you here, at all.
If you've actually read all the way to this point, you've noticed my definition of "quick" is a bit off, sorry about that.
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