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During my bout with swine flu, I finally broke down and decided to watch Transformers 2, which I had yet see because of a personal boycott due to the racist undertones in the movie. What follows is my review.

First, a rant:

Why in the heck are their “gangsta negro robots” in Transformers 2? I mean, come ON! If I wanted to see gangsta negroes, I’d start watching TV again. Gold-toothed robots built to look like monkeys, spewing foul-mouthed slang AND they can’t read. Oh just freaking wonderful! No wonder I get weird looks when I tell people I’m a computer programmer: with young kids running to trash like this, the thought of a negro that can read must be MIND BLOWING!

Okay, that’s over.

Redeeming aspects

This movie sucks. No doubt about it. Plot exists only as a very thin foundation for Michael Bay to heap on more explosions and over-the-top silliness. That said, even more so than the first one, I think Shia LeBouf does a great job carrying the entire movie. Without him, very little of the humor would work. Any moment from “he went to get you a tighter shirt” or “kitten calendar, kitten calendar, kitten calendar” to “I’m not talking to you for ten seconds” had me laughing out loud. When Mikaela walks in on him making out with another woman, his voice contains such authentic fright that every man watching implicitly understood the thoughts going through the characters head. Solid acting all around. Michael Bay should count his blessings that he got this man.

Megan Fox does bring the hotness, but honestly, I preferred Isabel Lucas’ Alice character. She looked just as good and acted much better. I especially thought she did a good job with the physical acting her part required. Seeing those two women in the same film makes me wonder what would have happened if Michael Bay had picked her for the lead female role. Then again, Bay prefers more voluptuous women, so I don’t think we’d ever see that happen.

Visually, while I applaud the forest fight scene and the devastator transformation sequence based on technical merit, I actually favor two smaller scenes: Alice’s transformation and Bumblebee’s fight against random Decepticon #37. I think these scenes resonate with me because they also contain my favorite music cues. They embody one of the few times the individual elements of the movie came together to equal more than the sum of their parts. Also, my kudos to ILM for doing a spectacular job. After getting their heads handed to them by The Matrix and Lord of the Rings, in addition to losing mind share to Pixar, I really thought we’d seen the last of the ILM Golden Age. But, Ironman looked absolutely incredible and one need only look at any scene that contained Ravage to see that ILM upped the ante yet again. Based on this, Ironman 2, with the addition of War Machine, will knock our socks off next year.

Expectations

On Transformers 1, seeing how Michael Bay got all the military stuff right (per usual) and picked a great male lead, I really had high hopes for Transformers 2, since Bay could work free of the product placement nonsense that movies of this ilk must deal with during their first instalments. Sort of like Sam Raimi’s evolution between Spiderman 1 and 2. Unfortunately, Bay let us all down (also, per usual). On the flip side, I went in with ROCK BOTTOM expectations for G.I. Joe and came out pleasantly surprised. It told a decent story, had passable visual effects and contained pseudo-okay acting (with the exception of Channing Tatum, whom completely sucked). I _ALMOST_ walked out of the theater feeling I got my money’s worth. ALMOST. So, G.I. Joe – 1, Transformers 0.

You can find a more thorough review at Brian’s Sonic-Cinema website