Nothing More Than Meets The Eye

Summer’s here and that means many things: short shorts, ice cream, the same fucking conversation starter of how about this heat, and summer blockbusters. After seeing TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, there’s a good chance that there won’t be a movie this summer that’s louder, dumber, and quite possibly more racist than this somewhat enjoyable schlock fest.

REVENGE OF THE FALLEN is essentially the same story, but bigger, louder, and somewhat dumber than the first. The story centers on Shia LaBeauf’s Sam Witwicky as he goes off to college, and is away from his girlfriend, Megan Fox, and from his bff. the transformer Bumblebee. From here on, the movie is the same: they’re caught in a cosmic war with the Transformers that’s been going on for centuries, and have to find ways to battle the evil transformers with the help from the army.

While summer action movies are an essential and healthy part of a film diet, REVENGE OF THE FALLEN might be too much. Literally after the opening credits the film is non-stop action from beginning to end, which is ok on some levels, but not when the action is on this level. After about 30 minutes, it’s not hard to grow tired of the overly elaborate action set pieces. At one point the movie blows up an aircraft carrier for no real reason, and by this point I was so numb from the action in the first half hour of the movie, that watching slow motion shots of people on fire and drowning was one of the more emotionally hollow things I’ve seen in recent years.

The film is what it is, a loud summer blockbuster, but one that is made on such a gaudy and monstrous level, that any real way to connect with it is lost. The acting like the movie is what it is, it’s adequate, but they really have nothing good to say. It’s a decent form of entertainment, but following a good slate of more thoughtful and more thrilling summer action films last year (IRON MAN, THE DARK KNIGHT) and a rejection of weaker ones (SPEED RACER, THE INCREDIBLE HULK), it’s somewhat disheartening to embrace with such fervor a piece of mediocrity at best.