‘Transformers’ sequel falls curiously flat

• By JOHN WIRT
• Movie critic
• Published: Jun 26, 2009

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It’s a total alien-robot slap- down. Autobots and Decepticons smash each other during a nearly perpetual burst of fiery battles waged from West Coast suburbia to an East Coast Ivy League campus to a pyramid-dotted desert in the Middle East. Director Michael Bay unleashes his robot fury to the point of exhaustion and indifference.

Between the extreme-fighting robot matches in this sequel to the 2007 hit, Transformers, screenwriters Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman interject phony stabs at patriotic imagery and the half-hearted romance shared by leading human characters played by Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox. There’s also a surprising amount of vulgarity and tastelessness in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, including a pair of ghetto-talking robots, Mudflap and Skids, two comic misfires who continuously slap and insult each other.

LaBeouf, reprising his role as young Sam Witwicky, the good Autobots’ human contact of choice, spends most of the film in panic mode. Once again, he possesses an object, or two, that the human-hating Decepticons must have to make their evil plans reality. As always, Sam is protected by his loyal guardian, an Autobot named Bumblebee.

A persecuted high school student in the first Transformers movie, Sam goes to college in the sequel. He tells Bumblebee to stay home. “I just want to be normal,” Sam explains. “I can’t do that with you.”

Heartbreaking words for the powerful but childlike Bumblebee, but you know this Autobot who transforms into a Camaro will ignore Sam’s wishes, especially if Sam is in danger. With Decepticons lurking in orbit above the Earth, danger is coming. Sam doesn’t manage to attend even one complete class and college party before the new robot war begins.

Although humans and their weapons are essentially useless against the super-powerful Decepticons, the U.S. military and the Autobots have fought side by side during the two years since the previous robot war. Revenge of the Fallen is filled with images of servicemen and servicewomen defending their country by land, sea and air.

Josh Duhamel’s Capt. Lennox and rapper-singer-actor Tyrese Gibson’s Sgt. Epps get most of the lines and close-ups. An executive-level bureaucrat who looks very much like former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shows up, too. Following one of those unofficial rules of Hollywood scriptwriting, the film’s arrogant, out-of-touch Rumsfeld look-alike is destined for humiliation.

Despite the abundant noise and fury of Revenge of the Fallen, the film’s biggest charge comes from the returning John Turturro as the federal agent who gave Sam such a hard time in Transformers I. Turturro’s very human energy and comic relief nearly makes this flat and redundant sequel worth seeing.