movie film review | chris tookey
 
     
     
 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

 (PG)
© Paramount/ DreamWorks - all rights reserved
     
  Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Review
Tookey's Rating
1 /10
 
Average Rating
2.13 /10
 
Starring
Sam Witwicky - Shia LaBeouf, Mikaela Banes - Megan Fox
Full Cast >
 

Directed by: Michael Bay
Written by: Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman

 
 
 
Released: 2009
   
Genre: ACTION
COMIC STRIP
ADVENTURE
SCIENCE FICTION
SEQUEL
   
Origin: US
   
Colour: C
   
Length: 149
 
 


 
PRO Reviews


Better than the original.
(Shawn Edwards, Fox-TV)
Why waste spleen on Michael Bay? He’s a real visionary — perhaps mindless in some ways (he’s never bothered filming a good script), but Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is more proof he has a great eye for scale and a gift for visceral amazement. Bay’s ability to shoot spectacle makes the Ridley-Tony-Jake Scott family look like cavemen... Bay is an ideal director to realize this peculiar genre, which remakes the surfeit of adolescent commercial media as a means of multimedia gratification.These cars, trucks, motorcycles and planes — both human-friendly Autobots and dastardly Decepticons — metamorphose fast, but their transfiguration is like the mechanical toy descriptions in E.T.A. Hoffman: fantastic and uncanny. Bay’s post-nuclear version of Hoffman’s The Nutcracker stirs emotion from our pop culture, industrial experience then connects to ancient spiritual myths (like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). It’s too much the production of industrialization to be considered magic, yet Bay’s sheer fascination with seeing is impressively communicated.
(Armond White, New York Press)
With machines that are impressively more lifelike, and characters that are more and more like machines, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen takes the franchise to a vastly superior level of artificial intelligence. As for human intelligence, it's primarily at the service of an enhanced arsenal of special effects, which helmer Michael Bay deploys like a general launching his very own shock-and-awe campaign on the senses. Otherwise, little seems new compared to the first installment, except that this version is longer, louder, and perhaps "more than your eye can meet" in one sitting. It will reap similar B.O. rewards worldwide... Like the other extensive combat scenes -- including a closing, all-out war that appears to take place in the same desert location as in the first movie - the sheer amount of ripping steel, exploding mechanical parts and mutating vehicles of all shapes and sizes is something to behold. Industrial Light & Magic's superb handling of these sequences, which are like a little boy's playtime fantasy taken to Wagnerian proportions, are the veritable centerpieces of a narrative that makes little effort to set up the fights.
(Jordan Mintzer, Variety)
It's bigger. Badder. Boobier. And many other words beginning with B, including boneheadedly brilliant.
(Robbie Collin, News of the World)
The film gives you exactly what you expect - and want - every step of the way. It’s big. It’s loud. It’s fast. And the special effects are, once again, staggering, making these supersize bots virtually photo-realistic: surely a Best Special Effects Oscar is assured, rectifying the travesty of Transformers losing out to The Golden Compass in 2008. So what’s new? Well, you get more ‘bot for your buck this time round, with new additions including the Gizmo-like squirt Wheelie, Emperor-style big baddie The Fallen (voiced by Tony Todd) and the awesome Devastator, a Decepticon with a suction vortex for a mouth, who wreaks infinite destruction in one of the film’s most impressive set pieces... It’s bigger, madder and more spectacular than any other film you’re likely to see this year, and for a summer event flick you can’t ask for more than that.
(Matt McAllister, Total Sci-Fi)
Movie was incredible, I liked it much more than the first! More action, more robots, less humans! Though there are some lame sexual inuendos like Wheelie humping Megan's leg... Wheelie is nothing like G1 Wheelie. He kinda reminds me of Rattrap. Lots of kitchen bots. One was a Samurai too. Bludgeon? Only named Constructicon is Rampage, and he is red. Megatron is revived by some Constructicons and "The Doctor." Sideways never transforms, he is cut in half by Sideswipe in the first battle scene in car mode. Sideswipe is cool. Ravage is cool too.
(Worst Previews)
Fallen so frequently approaches the first pic’s all-out awesomeness, and even occasionally surpasses it - notably in an opening blitzkrieg in Shanghai and a forest face-off between Optimus Prime and three Decepticons impressive enough to merit comparison with King Kong’s multiple T-Rex smackdown - that it's this close to being the perfect summer flick... Old folks may find the relentless sensory assault a little draining, but the bangs, ’bots and bombast ensure Fallen has everything Transformers fans will want and expect.
(Mark Samuels, Total Film)

Key to Symbols