“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”

Summer movies are notorious for poorly written, weakly acted actionfests marketed solely on their explosive effects. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is an exception to this rule, only because it has gigantic robots that take the shape of vehicles. The story is relatively straight forward, there are two warring factions of Transformer, the good and righteous Autobot, and the evil Decepticon, and both groups are waging their seemingly eternal war on earth.

The movie is starred by Shia LaBeouf, who plays Sam Witwicky. LaBeouf isn’t what I would call a terrible actor, but he has next to no depth. Every character he has ever played is the exact same, from “Disturbia” to “Eagle Eye” and even “Indiana Jones” each character behaves exactly like Sam Witwicky. Sam is a model of inferiority on every scale, and, in the movie’s prequel, happened to stumble into importance through his frightened scampering. In “ROTF” (Revenge of the Fallen), Sam just wants to lead a normal life, but fate is a capricious master and has other plans for Sam, and he is forced back into danger to help save the world, again, from the Decepticon threat.

The movies second star is the very attractive Megan Fox, who plays the character Mikaela Banes. Fox should feel blessed that she is an attractive woman, because the young lady couldn’t act her way out of a wet paper bag if she was given a pair of very sharp scissors. The majority of the time she was on the screen she simply pouted her lips and looked alluring, when she began to speak my brain began to hurt, and my face seemed to always wind up in the palm of my hand, as I felt the shame she must obviously feel from her terrible acting. The good news is her character had little use in the movie, so for the majority of the time she simply looked pretty for the audience, or ran in slow motion.

There were a number of supporting cast members, the Witwicky parents played relatively good parts, being a strong source of comic relief. Although there is one part involving a pot brownie that was overdone. The soldiers were underused, and only had small lines here and there, mostly one liners expressing disbelief. The two tag along characters Leo Spitz and Agent Simmons, played by Ramon Rodriguez and John Turturro respectively, were annoying, and performed weakly as comic relief. Turturro in particular was the butt of a number of physically comedic moments that would hardly raise a chuckle in the theater, and most of his lines were so cheesy that it was painful to see an actor say them. There were a few decent performances, none of which were by main characters, but for the most part the movie was an acting travesty.

The robots, however, are mostly excluded from this criticism. “Transformers: ROTF” does do a fantastic job with voice acting, at least for the most part. Characters like Ironhide and Starscream were voiced well, and Hugo Weaving returned to voice Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons. The only weak point of the Transformer’s voice acting would have been the “twins” Mudflap and Skids. The voice work was well done, but the lines were weak and eventually the characters go from funny and different to annoying and over-the-top.

The best performance inarguably came from the voice of Optimus Prime, voiced by Peter Cullen. The voice of Peter Cullen is deep and commanding, and has graced the youth of most children in some way. Through his words of wisdom as the narrator of “Voltron”, to his portrayal of the iconic Optimus Prime throughout the years, Cullen’s career as a voice actor prepared him well to steal the show completely in “ROTF”.

The movie has one other extremely strong point. In contrast to the prequel, the action scenes, and battles involving the giant robots are done very well. The indiscernible close ups were pulled back, allowing viewers to have a better idea who was punching who, and very seldom was it difficult to tell what was going on. The one strength Director Michael Bay has is in his special effects. The CGI robots were nearly flawless, and the explosions and weapons fire looked and sounded real enough. What Bay lacks in actual directing skill he makes up for in action.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is not a great movie, it is barely even a good movie. The acting and writing is weak beyond compare of any non-Michael Bay movie, and the storyline, which is two long and convoluted to actually summarize, dances about in a nearly indecipherable haze, culminating in a moment when Sam finds the “Mantle of Leadership”, making viewers groan aloud in the theater. Still, the movie has some great voice acting, and the action is done well, so the movie is worth seeing if you grew up watching Transformers, if not, this movie may best be skipped over. I give it a very generous score of 6 out of 10, the majority of the points for Peter Cullen’s flawless voice work.

Starring 

Plot:

The battle for Earth has ended but the battle for the universe has just begun. After returning to Cybertron, Starscream assumes command of the Decepticons, and has decided to return to Earth with force. The Autobots believing that peace was possible finds out that Megatron's dead body has been stolen from the US Military by Skorpinox and revives him using his own spark. Now Megatron is back seeking revenge and with Starscream and more Decepticon reinforcements on the way, the Autobots with reinforcements of their own, may have more to deal with then meets the eye.