At last year’s Comic Con, there were t-shirts everywhere promoting Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that had the slogan ”Bigger. F—ing. Robots” written on them. In the latest addition to the Transformers franchise, Michael Bay lived up to that promise. Revenge of the Fallen is bigger, louder, flashier and crazier than the first live action Transformers flick two years ago. However, bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better and it seems like Revenge of the Fallen may already be suffering from sequelitis.

There are two types of people in this world. Either you love Michael Bay flicks or you just simply hate them. After all the films he released, we should know that you can never take his work seriously (his previous attempt at becoming a serious director backfired – see Pearl Harbor). In his films, you can expect to see plenty of “Bayhem”, which consists lots of action, lots of explosions, mediocre acting, plenty of plotholes in the storyline and Mr. Bay’s obsession with the military. Despite the hate for Bay’s films, it seems to be a working formula as plenty of people flock to the theatres to see the major action blockbusters from this man. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is no different, except he did take every characteristic of his previous films and multiplied it by two.

In the latest installment of the Transformers saga, we see the return of our main protagonist Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) as he is about to head off to college to experience the wonderful educational experience and possible experimentation. He is also having trouble mustering the courage to say “I love you” to his girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) while she does a lot of pouting and leaning forward. Meanwhile Optimus Prime and the Autobots are teaming up with an international human organization called NEST to hunt down and destroy the Decepticons that are hiding on Earth. During one of the missions, Optimus hears the ominous message “The Fallen will rise again.” This prompts Optimus to ask Sam to help him save the world, but obviously Sam had ladies and college on his mind. After a series of unfortunate events, Sam is dragged back into the action, the evil Decepticons arrive on Earth and then we witness endless robot action.

It is easy to pick at this film since there are plenty of blatant flaws. There are some unintentional errors that lead to some laughs. Also, it doesn’t seem logical to expect the Autobots to spend their free time in their vehicle modes sitting in a giant storage room. For some odd reason, I have a feeling GM had a part in writing that scene. Continuity also goes out the window as it seems like it is daytime everywhere on Earth, but that’s not the problem. The major issue with the film is that it feels like the writers wrote everything on post-it notes or napkins over lunch hour and pieced it all together later that day. The film has one too many dead spots and certain scenes don’t transition very well. It is hard to believe that Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and newbie Ehren Kruger were the writing team behind this movie as Orci and Kurtzman were the ones that did such a wonderful job with the Star Trek reboot earlier this summer. Perhaps Transformers is simply missing the magical touch of JJ Abrams.

One of the key elements that prevented the film from turning into a large piece of scrap metal is the nice touch of comedy. While the first film consisted of a lot of witty, well-timed humour (mostly from Shia LaBeouf), this movie seems to have dropped that and decided to go for the lowbrow stuff that consists of a few dog on dog action and a robot humping Megan Fox’s leg. Comic relief also came courtesy of the Autobot twins Mudflap and Skids who seem to have watched way too many rap videos during their down time. It’s not exactly a bad thing to throw in the lowbrow humour, but it does lack some of the charm that came with the first film. There are other things that generate plenty of chuckles like the moments that involve Sam’s parents (which include a hilarious scene of Sam’s mother munching on hash brownies) and having Sam’s motormouth roommate Leo (Ramon Rodriguez) tag along for the ride.

Michael Bay may not be the best director out there, but he does have a good eye for creating something that is visually pleasing (and that includes having a college that enrolls only supermodels – his films speaks to men’s hearts very well). There are several scenes that did stand out including the wonderfully computer generated scene where Ravage releases pebbles of metal that later combined into a small but deadly Decepticon. Bay considers making films 3D to be a silly gimmick and he certainly tries to prove this with all the robot action in this flick. To this point, he does succeed as the film does lead to a sensory overload by the time we leave the theatres. Just wait til James Cameron rolls around in December with his film ‘Avatar’ to prove that 3D is not a silly gimmick after all.

At a running time of two and a half hours, the movie is 30 minutes too long. The excessive use of slow motion attempted to create a dramatic effect, but it just dragged the movie down a bit instead. However it’s not entirely a bad thing, there were many scenes that consisted of Megan Fox running in slow motion. How could any guy complain about that?

After all is said and done, this is not a horrible movie. It provides plenty of giant robot action and massive destruction to satisfy the inner 10 year old within all of us. The film is intended to be a simple-minded summer popcorn flick and it is indeed a fun ride. Another sequel was announced to be released 2 years from now, but Michael Bay insists that it will be released in 2012 instead. He wanted a break from the giant robots before making another film in the franchise. While the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen did not lose its entertainment value, it could use some reworking. It is a good thing that Michael Bay is taking a break. He could use some time to go back to regroup with his creative team and create something that would definitely be more than meets the eye.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆