Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

Last night, after a day in London, I was heading home from Leicester Square when I spotted that Transformers 2 was about to begin at the famous Odeon in about six minutes. Well, I was in no particular hurry to end such a great day out.


The screen looked a bit bendy, but I didn't care. Transformers 1 had been a fairly mindless adventure, particularly towards the end, so as I tonight settled-down in the back row with my bar of Boost and bottle of Ribena, I switched my brain firmly into the off position.

Inevitably, the non-functioning of my cranium for the next 150 minutes makes it hard to really be objective, but I think this was a good decision.

I didn't follow the plot, and was turned-off by the whole thing even more than I had already turned myself off, but in my mind the film could do no wrong. Again, the last half-an-hour particularly was just big alien robots firing at each other, exactly fulfilling my low expectations.

The entire tone of this is one of wanton carelessness, and as such it feels completely different to the first movie. That had a story. That was about humans. That was fun.

This on the other hand was about CGI. Big, violent, firey, long, noisy, long, CGI. And it was long as well.

Many sequels make at least some attempt to emulate the good things of the original. These guys made no effort, and were quite unashamed about it, which is completely cool with me, because they were so up-front and honest about this intention from the outset.

My initial concerns that I perhaps should have gone to see the fuller version in IMAX for a very similar price turned out to be unfounded. By the end of the night I had had my fill of this.

Thank you for completing my day off so well.

Please don't misunderstand me, it's not a bad film, it just doesn't contain anything above average.

Exactly five out of ten.