"Mr. Bay, those aren't ideas they're just special effects." "I don't understand the difference..." Ah yes, another Michael Bay classic, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. My best friend was stoked for this movie after seeing the first one. She's a big anime fan so this is right up her ally. After the movie, we both pretty much had the same reaction. In the immortal words of Jay Sherman "it stinks." Well maybe it's so bad it's good. No, it doesn't even qualify for that. Transformers 2 is just plain bad. I think it encompasses everything wrong with the summer blockbuster. It lacks anything resembling a concrete story and heavily uses CGI special effects as filler.

The movie begins as Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is heading back to college, and thus has to separate from his girlfriend Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox). Has car Bumblebee also says that he will miss him. Sam still has a shard of the energon cube from the first movie, which the resurrected Decepticon leader Megatron wants. This is so he can use it to fulfil The Fallen's command, which somehow involves destroying the sun. The Autobots, under Optimus Prime, have to stop him. However, they run into problems when Optimus dies in battle. Sam, Mikaela, and the other Autobots have to hunt down the location of the Fallen's sun destroying weapon to finish him off once and for good. Ok, so that pretty much sums up the entire film.

The movie runs for 150min, which is at least an hour too long. This movie relies heavily on filler, such as extensive scenes of LaBeouf, Fox, John Turturro (playing an ex CIA agent), and Ramón Rodríguez (Sam's college roommate) wandering the Egyptian desert. These scenes do nothing to advance the story only serve to show off just how annoying the characters are. The film was also significantly dumbed down from the fist one, if that were possible. In one of the first scenes we see, Sam's chihuahua is madly humping another dog. Sam's mom while visiting his college somehow buys pot not knowing what it is and goes on an unfunny stoned rampage to the embarrassment of her son. (I'd be embarrassed too if I were in this movie) Despite all that, I took the stupidity right up until truck balls. The Decepticon Devastator (the giant robot seen climbing the pyramid) actually has two large wrecking balls dangling between his legs, which the movie clearly points out through Turturro's observations. Bay himself has confirmed that these are Devastator's "testicles". Really, truck balls?! It doesn't really offend my sense of decency but come on, it's just so incredibly stupid. That one scene sucked my IQ down 50 points. Why would anybody put that in there! You know somebody made an executive decision to keep that. Then there's Mudflap and Skids, the two cars that bust out the Ebonics. Some have claimed the look and voices of the two Autobot twins is a racial stereotype against urban blacks. I wholeheartedly agree. Once again, I'm not morally offended by this, but it's just dumb; Jar Jar Binks dumb. Lastly, there also seems to be a lot of hot models attending Sam's college. This is a common Hollywood cliche in movies like this. After five years (don't ask) at UofT, with the majority of the student body being female, I can assure you that college does not look like that in real life. Well, unless you have an Asian fetish, then go nuts.

If the movie couldn't get any worse, the all consuming special effects look awful to boot. The Transformers have a cartoony/plasticy look that doesn't add to the realism. It's a live action movie but it almost has a Bed Knobs & Broomsticks feel to it; a cartoon within a live film. CGI, when poorly done, will always stand out like a sore thumb. A good artist will make them look like they belong there. A good example would be Iron Man last summer, or Lord of the Rings. Transformers just looks like garbage though. The faces of the robots were particularly badly done. Transformation scenes looked good though but the robots should probably stick to their disguise forms. Mind you, the explosions and action scenes are well done, as they should be considering it's 90% of the movie.

Over all, this film has no saving grace. I have no idea how this movie has continued to stay in the top 10 box office gross list for so long. It's probably the worst movie I've seen in some time. Definitely not worth the $10 for the ticket. It's unnecessarily long, it's boring, it looks awful, and it has no story what so ever. Don't waste your time, not even renting it on DVD.

Score: 2 out of 10

What Works:
-Transformation scenes and action involving live action actors looks good

What Doesn't Work:
-Everything else