Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Rating:

Despite my utter lack of interest in comic book movies and my even deeper lack of interest in robot movies, I willingly went to the theater last week to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Why? For no better reason than to please the person that I was with. Well, that, and because it’s the sequel to the first Transformers, which I happen to have watched last year to please the very same person.

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the Transformers concept. The whole idea strikes me as absurd… but then again, the movie is based on a comic, and what kind of a comic isn’t absurd?

I guess if I put the impossibility of the plot behind me, the movie is not bad overall. Even though this kind of movie doesn’t usually appeal to me, I did find myself wrapped up in the story. The acting is alright, the special effects are pretty cool, and the movie kept me entertained.

One of my few complaints is that the movie was long – not quite as long as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but still quite lengthy.

My only other complaint is about the racial stereotype portrayed by the robot twins. I realize that the twins were put into the movie for comic relief, but I thought that’s what the crazy mother was for. The producers should have stopped there – even the mother was a little too much. Now I’ll admit, if the twins were actually funny, I wouldn’t care half as much. The problem is, I found the twins rather unamusing and superfluous. The movie could have been better without them. Plus, the producers would have saved themselves a lot of grief from critics who consider the twins “racial caricatures.”

After talking about the movie with a couple friends, it seems people are mostly peeved by the amount of time the movie spends on the crazy mom, the twins, and the romance between Mikaela and Sam. While I applaud the creators’ efforts to appeal to all moviegoers, it could have been more gracefully done. The efforts to throw romance and comedy into a movie that should have been focused on a battle between good and evil robots may have backfired on the producers. All the unnecessary additions to the story line took away from the overall plot.

In spite of all this, I still thought the movie was ok. I don’t have the time to be watching it again any time soon, but I don’t regret spending eight bucks and over two hours on the movie. But that’s just me.