Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Review

Can someone please put a leash on Michael Bay? Seriously, would that be at all possible?
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is simply a mess, created from the indulgences of a giant man-child of a director. While he may have done a pretty good job with the original Transformers, a movie that I had very low expectations for but ended up loving, this film is a lumbering behemoth of a movie that can't decide where to go. It's long, it moves slowly and it can't decide where to put its focus. It's like a giant zombie with ADD, only a movie.
Weighing in at around two hours and forty-five minutes, Revenge of the Fallen starts out strong with a nifty bit of narration and shots of aborigines circa 17,000BC finding Transformers on their land and then a great action sequence with the NEST unit, a team of elite soldiers who have been paired with the Autobots for the purpose of hunting down Decepticons. The NEST team is led by Major Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). From there, we see that Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is getting ready to go to college and that his parents Ron (Kevin Dunn) and Judy (Julie White) along with girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) are having trouble dealing with this fact. Different loud things happen and adventure (eventually) begins. The key plot point of the movie is that the Transformers have been coming to Earth for a long time, but that fact was lost to history amongst humans and Transformers both. The titular character, The Fallen (voiced by Tony Todd, who I actually had the pleasure of meeting a couple of weeks ago), seeks an ancient machine that was built on Earth that would sap the energy out of the Sun, thereby destroying it and all life on Earth. Of course, things are far more complicated than that, which is one of the big problems with the film. Writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Ehren Kruger simply try to balance too much into the story. In fact, the film is so complicated that later on, characters will actually say lines to no one in particular that explain why they're doing something. I even had trouble remembering what characters were doing what and why, and I'm generally very good at following complex plots. I was especially confused with the motivations and actions of a general that was apparently higher up in NEST's command. I simply could not figure out what the guy was up to for a large portion of the movie.
Also, there are way too many characters, many of whom could have been weeded out or given less screen time, like the far-too-many comic-relief characters. Sam's roommate, Leo Spitz (Ramon Rodriguez) is almost entirely useless to the plot save for being the one that finds former Sector 7 agent Simmons (John Tuturro), otherwise all he is there for is to whine a whole lot. While Sam's parents were a lot of fun in the first film, in this they are given more screen time than they really need and the comedy is extremely forced. A gag involving Sam's mother eating some "green" brownies goes on far too long. They are later kidnapped by the Decepticons in an effort to create some dramatic tension for Sam in the film's climax, but an intervention by Bumblebee removes all effectiveness from the scene. Even worse are the Twins, a couple of Autobots named Skids and Mudflap. As established in the first film, the Transformers learned English (and gained their various accents and attitudes) by analyzing the Internet. Skids and Mudflap apparently chose African-Americans, and the characters' idiocy and appearance (one of them has gold and silver "teeth," reminiscent of a grill) are borderline offensive. Not to mention, they do absolutely nothing important for the story - they're just there to be dumb and funny.
This is a film that could have easily dropped forty minutes from its run time, but Michael Bay's predictable indulgences left it dragging. I checked my watch about forty-five minutes into the movie, thinking it had gone on much longer. Any time I check my watch in a movie, that's a sure sign that the pacing is slow and I find myself feeling uninterested in the film.
The action sequences are fun to watch, but in sequences involving larger numbers of 'bots, it's hard to keep track of who's who. That was one of the things about the cartoon, the Transformers all looked so distinctly different that it was easy to tell them apart. In these movies, the attempt at hyper-realistic transformations leaves the robot forms looking largely identical.
There was some nice fan-service in there, like Frank Welker returning as Soundwave. I can't complain about Hugo Weaving's Megatron, but I do miss Frank Welker being the one to talk back at Optimus. Starscream also showed some of his true colors, maneuvering to take the lead of the Decepticons, which was great. I still feel like the Transformers themselves are under-characterized. Over all, they have very little personality. Some more scenes that are just Transformers talking to other Transformers would be nice, because we'd get a sense of who the Transformers are.
And, of course, all of Bay's hallmarks are there. The kiss at sunset? Check. A whole crap-load of stuff blowing up? Check (but that's a good thing for a Transformers movie). The movie being way too long (I'm looking at you, Pearl Harbor)? Check. The glorification/exploitation of the female body? Check (but, hey, we're talking Megan Fox here and that's never bad). Throw in a large dose of "ugh"-inducing testicalular-based humor and a mostly funny little Decepticon that Mikaela keeps in a box, and there you have it.

In the end this movie basically just ends up being kind of "Meh." Apparently, Michael Bay doesn't want to do another Transformers movie as soon as Paramount/Dreamworks want to release another one. I would love to see what a different (see: better) director could do with the franchise. Here's hoping they make a good selection.

- Nate