by Raffi Varoujian

Created on: March 17, 2010

Th first Transformers movie by Director Michael Bay wasn’t the best of films, but it was visually arresting, chock full of humour and, putting aside the obvious money to be made in merchandising and character tie-in’s, a worthwhile cinematic exercise. However, as is often the case in the world of Hollywood, the lure of the almighty greenback was too much to resist, the moneymen sensed a franchise in the making and could not leave well enough alone. The result was an ill-conceived sequel – “Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen” – which was not a patch on the already flawed original.

Calling the developments in this film a “plot” would be exceedingly generous. In a nutshell (trust me, it’s all you need) it is two years after the events of the first film, and our hero, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), is about to decamp to a high-brow east coast university, leaving his unfeasibly attractive girlfriend, Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) to run a garage with her ex-con father. Across the world in Shanghai, a special military unit called NEST, an alliance between human troops and good guy robots (called Autobots) - led by Autobot leader Optimus Prime - set about tracking down and destroying remnants of the bad guy robots (Decepticons) from the first movie. During this encounter in China, the Autobots are warned that “the Fallen will rise again…”.

After working in some overly complicated mythology, a bit of scene setting and some earnestly narrated flashbacks, the film quickly descends into a stereotypical battle of good versus evil as both robot factions scramble to uncover an ancient artefact on which the fate of Earth apparently rests. There are several sub-plots to the main “story” and some faintly ridiculous background that does not survive even casual scrutiny, as the film rushes around from one set piece battle to the next in a whirlwind of flying bolts, wheels and shrapnel. Revenge of the Fallen is a little easier to follow if you have seen the first film, but there is enough back story to make the sequel comprehensible to those who have not.

Shia LaBeouf reprises his role as slightly geeky, put upon Sam Witwicky and proceeds to spend most of the film with a gormless “I can’t believe how lucky I am” look on his face. Lucky to have a shiny yellow Chevy Camaro that transforms into a butt-kicking guardian Autobot called Bumblebee, lucky enough to have a drop-dead gorgeous

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