Less than meets the eye

PHOTO BY MOVIEWEB.COM

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN

Where is it playing?: Hi-Way Drive-In, Movie Lompoc, Santa Maria 10

What's it rated?: PG-13

What's it worth?: $$3.50 (Brent)

What's it worth?: $$2.00 (Roberta)

It’s the sequel to the movie based on a cartoon based on a toy line! For the uninitiated, Transformers are living alien robots who hide in plain sight on Earth in the form of vehicles and other machines. The good Autobots are allied with the humans as they wage war against the evil Decepticons all over the globe. Meanwhile, the Autobots’ original  human buddy, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf),  is now bound for college and a normal life. But when he touches a fragment of the “AllSpark” cube and starts seeing weird symbols, he becomes the key to winning the war—and the target of the Decepticons. Directed by Michael Bay.

Roberta: The special effects were great and the Transformers were amazing, but the rest of the movie fell flat.

Brent: After the opening battle sequence, we cut to Sam, who’s about to depart for college. Can his relationship with “hottie” mechanic Mikaela (Megan Fox) survive with 3,000 miles between them? The first movie asked, “Will they get together?” The sequel asks the much less interesting question, “Will they stay together?”

Roberta: I love when couples are in love, but when these two were kissing, and she’s saying “It took all of this for you to say I love you,” I felt repulsed. I think I even said “Shut up!”  

Brent: Of course, practically the only reason to even have puny humans in this movie is so we can imagine ourselves in their place, and think of how cool it would be to have our own robot pals. Thus, it’s rather awkward when Sam just wants the Autobots to go away so he can pursue a normal college existence. Hey Sam, I know being caught in the middle of an intergalactic war has got to suck ... but dude, seriously—your car turns into a giant space robot. Don’t you find that the least bit awesome? LaBeouf’s best moment is the scene where he’s going crazy with AllSpark knowledge during a class. They should have let him do more of that, and less imitation of Tobey Maguire’s sullen reluctant hero routine from Spider-man 2.

Roberta: There was no character development, aside from the little RC car transformer (Wheelie) who had a nice comic interplay with Mikaela. And the yellow car (Bumblebee) had a little bit of a personality, expressing it through the radio with his choice of songs.

Brent: It’s curious that with all their advanced alien technology, the Autobots can’t fix his voice properly. But it does lend him an endearing quality—maybe he just decided to pretend he couldn’t speak once he heard the dialogue the other robots have to say. Then again, maybe Autobot technology isn’t all that great. Why do the Decepticons have all these funky, unique, fascinating kinds of transformers on their side—like a tentacle guy on a satellite, and a big cat thing that spits ball-shaped mini-bots—while our heroes are all just of the typical vehicle-into-giant robot variety? Shouldn’t they diversify a little, too? Sadly, instead they’ve recruited “The Twins,” Skids and Mudflap. It’s like they took Jar Jar Binks, taught him to speak in an ultra-stereotypical Hollywood impression of “gangsta” slang, and doubled him.

Roberta: The Twins are funny at the beginning, when they take the form of ice cream trucks, but after that it’s just shtick.

Brent: I would much rather have seen Sam bonding with Bumblebee in the screen time wasted on these “characters.”

Roberta: They also could have done away with Sam’s weird college roommate/sidekick.

Brent: Yeah, he was almost as bad as the Twins. Fortunately, John Turturro returns as Special Agent Simmons. This time, he’s a little more balanced of a character, and he actually raises the movie a bit. Unfortunately, the “self-important authority figure” role he played in the first film now goes to a cranky government liaison. The strong, confident voice of Autobot leader Optimus Prime (provided by the original cartoon voice actor, Peter Cullen) lends some gravity to the production. Strangely, the main villain isn’t Megatron—he’s now second banana to “The Fallen.” Why do we need this new guy? Megatron was “killed” at the end of the last movie (temporarily at least), so he had enough reason to want revenge himself, and The Fallen’s attemptedly epic backstory isn’t very interesting or informative. The cacophonous climactic battle between good and evil was less exciting than a skirmish with tiny kitchen-appliance robots earlier on.

Roberta: I found myself daydreaming about what I was going to buy at the grocery store afterward. At one point, I was an inch away from falling asleep. I went into the movie a bubbly, happy person and transformed into a disappointed, bored person. Luckily, I can transform back at any time.

Brent M. Parker is a writer, artist, and aspiring animated filmmaker. Roberta Slutske is his proud mother who taught him everything he knows. Contact them at mail@santamariasun.com.