We posted our extensive Transformers 2 review up on Sunday night — it focuses on explaining the storyline step by step with an analysis of the new characters and robots from a fan’s perspective. Some fans were not happy with the outcome. View Movie Chronicles review
USA Today
Meanwhile, pyramids are dismantled, bodies hurled through the air and facial orifices probed. And all the metal on display is more brassy than precious.
No amount of technical virtuosity can make up for an agonizingly witless story, clumsy dialogue and uninteresting characters.
Robert Ebert
The battle scenes are bewildering. A Bot makes no visual sense anyway, but two or three tangled up together create an incomprehensible confusion. I find it amusing that creatures that can unfold out of a Camaro and stand four stories high do most of their fighting with…fists. Like I say, dumber than a box of staples. They have tiny little heads, except for Starscream® [Jetfire], who is so ancient he has an aluminum beard.Aware that this movie opened in England seven hours before Chicago time and the morning papers would be on the streets, after writing the above I looked up the first reviews as a reality check. I was reassured: “Like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan!” (Bradshaw, Guardian); “Sums up everything that is most tedious, crass and despicable about modern Hollywood!” (Tookey, Daily Mail); “A giant, lumbering idiot of a movie!” (Edwards, Daily Mirror). The first American review, Todd Gilchrist of Cinematical, reported that Bay’s “ambition runs a mile long and an inch deep,” but, in a spirited defense, says “this must be the most movie I have ever experienced.” He is bullish on the box office: it “feels destined to be the biggest movie of all time.” It’s certainly the biggest something of all time.
EW
At last year’s Comic-Con convention, several representatives of Revenge of the Fallen appeared with the slogan ”Bigger. F—ing. Robots.” on their T-shirts, and Bay, taking that cue, knows just what his job is relative to the first Transformers (2007): It’s to make the movie huger, louder, smashier, and — on the mechanical level — more crazily, audaciously imaginative. He succeeds. Revenge of the Fallen showcases an infectiously diverse brigade of chattery unfolding contraptions, from mechanical gremlins that transform out of kitchen appliances to one that erupts from a vintage airplane to a coed with a tongue of steel. Each of these creature-gizmos has a marvelous, organic fluidity — they don’t just move, they clank and roll. And it was an inspired touch to set the film’s most ferocious battle amid the Pyramids, featuring a Decepticon so humungous it just about waddles with power. Revenge of the Fallen may be a massive overdose of popcorn greased with motor oil. But it knows how to feed your inner 10-year-old’s appetite for destruction.
Chicago Tribune (1.5/5)
There’s a lazy cynicism to “Transformers 2,” from the dubious comic-relief “ghetto” ‘bots known as the Twins, to the rump-in-the-air introduction of Fox’s character, to the general air of militaristic fetishism. The chief human antagonist is an Obama administration security adviser who keeps pushing diplomatic solutions while the Decepticons kill, kill, kill. Near the end an aged Autobot, waling away at his enemies atop a pyramid, mutters the line “I’m too old for this crap.” No matter, pal. You’re not in the target demographic.
AICN
Review
Harry says TRANSFORMERS 2 is foul mouthed, racist & misogynistic! It also runs an hour too long!
All that said though — my nephew loved the film, he’s nearly nine. He hated the kissy stuff. But he loved pretty much everything else. He adored Mudflap and Skids — which is more disturbing than anything else. The amount of foul language popping out of their mouths is astonishing, especially with the shit, bitch, muther…, ass, pussy, etc…
What the hell is this stuff doing in a TRANSFORMERS movie?
Anyone?
This film was conceived during the WRITER’S STRIKE — with Michael Bay up at ILM doing animatics on the big action sequences. Then when the strike was over, he brought in Orci & Kurtzman to string the scenes together. Which oddly enough was kinda how Hitchcock and Lehmann worked on NORTH BY NORTHWEST (to radically different results). And then the roto-rooter of screenwriters, Ehren Kruger did the mop up work on the film. At least that’s how I’ve heard it went down.
The film will make a mint, undeservedly so. Steven Spielberg should be embarrassed to have his name on shoddy storywork like this. Shame on you Steven. Kids will be lining up for this — and they’ll be met with dog fucking, cussing, racial stereotypes and more. I seriously wonder if Spielberg was thinking of Mudflap & Skids as he watched the inauguration of Barack Obama — because he’d read the script at that point, he knew what his name was bringing, and yet he still had the gall to attend.
The filmmakers, studio and toymakers behind this film should be ashamed. To spend this type of money to bring this sort of hurtful and repugnant work to screen — it is an insult to every DREAM that so many have WORKed for, for years.
I’d like to ask you not to support this film, but those of you with young boys, I know there isn’t a chance. But realize you’ll be taking them to see a film with the lowest forms of humor, stereotypes and racism around. Not only that, but its packaged for our children. Which makes it all the more offensive.
Rotten Tomatoes
The movie currently sits at a low 30% from top critics, the community give it 68%.
