Review: 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'

Plotless, loud, and long, this sequel follows the Autobots in their fight against their sworn enemies, the Decepticons.

from the June 26, 2009 edition

If you are 14-year-old boy, or have the mind-set of one, you'll probably be enthralled by Michael Bay's "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." I wasn't (the understatement of the year). But I would like to think that even if I was 14, either in body or spirit, I would still find this film an impossibly, incomprehensibly overlong and cacophonous bore. Maybe they should have called it "Transformers: Revenge on the Critics." Or how about "Transformers: Revenge on Every Sentient Being Except 14-Year-Old Boys Who, if They Repeatedly Revisit This Movie, Will Lose Their Hearing in Five Years"?

For the record, Shia LaBeouf, along with the military and Autobot leader Optimus Prime, is once again battling Decepticons. Plotwise, that's all you're going to get from me because that's all I understood. (The same could be said for the screenwriters.) Megan Fox, Hollywood's It Girl of the hour, manages to cantilever her charms in the most unpromising locales, including auto shops and Egyptian deserts. The film's scariest moment: A shot of John Turturro, who plays an ex-government agent, in a G-string. Grade: D- (Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material.)