Box Office
4 stars out of 5 -- "TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN does not take itself too seriously. There is a neat and jokey atmosphere that pervades throughout..." 06/16/2009Hollywood Reporter
"[A] nonstop whirl of flying, battling and crashing machinery....With Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox back as the leads and massive battles involving ships, planes, tanks, rockets and industrial level shape-changing machines..." 06/15/2009 Movieline
"That someone actually conceived of these hulking, twisting, Rubik's contraptions, choreographed the battles to the inch, and executed them as flawlessly as they did...it's pretty amazing..." 06/23/2009 ReelViews 5 of 10
Call me old fashioned, but I like a little side story and character to go along with my order of big, loud special effects. Apparently, I'm in the minority, though, because the original Transformers made more money than I'd see in 300 lifetimes. So kick back, dig into your jumbo faux butter-drenched popcorn, and slurp your gargantuan soda while experiencing the kind of supersized mayhem that only Michael Bay can deliver. It's a question of whether the cholesterol in the "butter" will harden your arteries before what's on the celluloid can cause brain death...Now is probably not the time to heap scorn on the writing team of Orci and Kurtzman (abetted by Ehren Kruger), who are responsible for this screenplay. At the moment, the pair are enjoying praise for their Star Trek reboot. Let's be honest, though - that's not exactly an airtight story, but compared to this one, it's a masterpiece of coherence and ingenuity. Pundits have pointed out similarities in Star Trek to Star Wars, but they're even more obvious here, with Megatron playing Darth Vader to The Fallen's Emperor. And Orci and Kurtzman out-menace The Phantom Menace by providing not one, but two, imitation Jar Jar Binks...In the long run, this review will be worth even less than what John Nance Garner called the Vice Presidency of the United States. Transformers fans, salivating for two years awaiting this sequel, will queue up to see it, then leave the theater and get back in line again. The storyline is so infantile that it will appeal to young kids (or at least to those with XY sex chromosomes), although one has to wonder whether the length will be something of an impediment. The target viewer for this movie is not noted for a long attention span. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will make a ton of money, Michael Bay will be lauded as the greatest director of our generation, and the accountants at Paramount will have their second collective orgasm in as many months. As for me, I will try desperately not to weep - not so much for what the success of a movie like this means to motion pictures but for the simple fact that I'm going to have to do this all over again in two or three years for Transformers 3. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 5 of 10
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination...The plot is incomprehensible. The dialog of the Autobots, Decepticons and Otherbots is meaningless word flap. Their accents are Brooklyese, British and hip-hop, as befits a race from the distant stars. Their appearance looks like junkyard throw-up. They are dumb as a rock. They share the film with human characters who are much more interesting, and that is very faint praise indeed...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. - Roger Ebert
Entertainment Weekly 7 of 10
In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a Decepticon -- one of those evil robots that looks like a junk heap of pewter shards designed by H.R. Giger -- floats around in space, where it sends a ball of fire rocketing to Earth. The asteroid-like object hits the ocean, where it emerges as a prancing metallic cougar, which then vomits out a mass of ball bearings, which somehow assemble themselves into a super-thin droid that's like a Calder sculpture made entirely of jackknives. And it's this dude who gets down to business, attempting to steal the shard that will animate the dormant Decepticons hidden on Earth. The sheer velocity of all this shape-shifting is dizzying and funny and zigzag cool. The sequence serves no real purpose beyond dazzle for dazzle's sake, but when you're watching it, that's purpose enough. Revenge of the Fallen has a number of dead spots, but every time the movie hits one, you can sit back in eager, childish anticipation of the next feat of industrial whirligig diversion...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. - Owen Gleiberman
|
