Artist and filmmaker Peter Greenaway once famously noted, “Cinema is far too rich and capable a medium to be merely left to the storytellers.” Still, when he suggested a move away from narrative, I can’t imagine that he was advocating a movie like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” a cinematic avalanche in which Michael Bay eschews anything resembling plot or characters and instead screams at the audience’s eyes for two and a half hours.
And before any of you launch into the usual riposte of “This isn’t supposed to be an Oscar-winning drama, it’s just FUN!!!!” let me point out that there are good giant-robots-walloping-the-tar-out-of-each-other movies and there are bad ones, and this second “Transformers” movie falls squarely into the latter category.
Trying to take in this movie is akin to shaking up a snowglobe and paying attention to glitter shard No. 432,581: When two similarly-colored CG robots are simultaneously morphing and punching each other in the head, it’s impossible to figure out where one ends and the other begins, resulting in a visual cacophony that goes hand-in-hand with the bowels-rattling bassline and the shrieking, incoherent dialogue.
And then there’s what passes for story, which has all the lucidity of a toddler-on-Red-Bull’s fever dream. It goes something like this: The good-guy Autobots are still on Earth but are being kept a secret from the general public. They’re working with the U.S. Army to wipe out occasional appearances from the nasty Decepticons, and intel suggests that something big and nasty is around the corner.
That would The Fallen (yes, it’s a character), a rogue Autobot who had once attempted, millennia earlier, to snuff out the sun. He plans to use a shard of the All Spark, which brings these robots to life to… wait, actually, I can’t even remember what the shard, which happens to be in the possession of Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), has to do with his evil plan, but eventually the bad guys figure out that Sam has some mystical knowledge embedded in his brain that will help them to locate the Matrix of Leadership (as opposed to the Axis of Evil, perhaps) that will restart the sun-destroying machine.
The storyline, such as it is, exists mainly as an excuse to reassemble much of the cast of the first film, including Sam’s sexpot mechanic girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox), conspiracy theorist Agent Simmons (John Turturro, who also voices cranky old Autobot Jetfire), and Sam’s goofy parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White). Many of the robots from the last movie return, and there’s the new addition of “twin” cars whose speech and behavior patterns are appalling stereotypes of young African-American men; the movie should just name the duo Step and Fetchit or Shuck and Jive to drive home the point.
There’s no wiggle room here for anyone to do any actual acting — and yet, Tyrese (as a soldier) still manages to be stiffer than anyone else on screen — and those who want to look for it can find a pro-George W. Bush subtext. (Diplomacy is for wimps! The French eat gross stuff!)
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Shia LaBeouf’s star still rising
But with so much to despise about “Revenge of the Fallen,” there’s no need to get caught up in matters of performance or ideology. This movie is an assault: It doesn’t look good, it doesn’t make sense and it pummels the viewer into submission when it could just as easily have been entertaining and exhilarating.
“Transformers” is ostensibly about saving mankind from exterior forces, but humanity itself is sorely lacking from the finished product.
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