Transformers: Less than Meets the Eye

I have to say, I enjoyed the Autobots and Decepticons plot and main story of the new Transformers movie. Their battle for dominance on the Earth and the involvement of Sam and Mikala went well together and would have made for a good movie. I say “would have,” because there was just too much in this movie that detracted from my enjoyment and really put me off in my overall reaction to it.

Begin rant:

My first big beef is there were too many characters in Revenge of the Fallen that nearly made me walk out of the theater and demand a refund. The first two on the list are the twin Autobots Mudflap and Skids. These two bicker back and forth too much with each other and use too much profanity and vulgar language. They are just plain annoying and inappropriate. Next is Sam’s college roommate Leo. He is one of those characters who whines and is always scared and serves no real purpose in the movie other than to find somebody who can help with the symbols Sam is seeing. He reminds me of Jar Jar in The Phantom Menace, but a Jar Jar who gets hit in the nuts in every scene he is in. Last is the Pretender Decepticon Alice. All of a sudden the Decepticons have a hormone-crazed Terminator on their side that has a long, hidden tail and a long, lashing tongue. In my opinion, she wasn’t very attractive, but Leo was drooling all over her.

There were more than just a few characters that could have been done away with. Several little clips and scenes could have been cut out and made the movie a lot more enjoyable. Sam’s family has a new dog in this movie, and it unfortunately gets humped by the original dog at least twice in the film. I don’t know what purpose this served other than to get a crude laugh. Once was enough, even though it was not necessary. Speaking of humping, we have a horny Decepticon turncoat named Wheelie who changes sides when Mikala catches him spying on her. Let’s just say Wheelie takes a liking to Mikala doing something that every adolescent male would love to do to her. Then comes the giant Decepticon named Devastator. I thought it was pretty neat getting the Constructicons into the mix, but to have a pair of wrecking balls hanging from between its back legs and a character saying he was under its scrotum was just too much. This movie isn’t American Pie or any other movie with Sean William Scott in it.

The last point I want to touch on is also a topic that has been much talked about since the first movie. The whole damn movie was just one long GM commercial. With the way things are going, they could use all the help they could get in advertising. There was a Corvette Stingray concept car as the Autobot Sideswipe in one of the first scenes. Sideswipe was a bad ass in that scene, but I didn’t see him in the rest of the movie except in auto form. That kind of annoyed me as it seemed like too much of a teaser. Cisco-acquired Webex also made an appearance in the movie when Sam and Mikala were supposed to have a cyber date. More lame product placement.

There you have it. Another box office smash that is going to rake in millions and millions of dollars that actually sucked. If you cut out everything I didn’t like, I think you have an awesome movie that didn’t waste two and a half hours of my life. Oh yeah, it was also unnecessarily long, unlike this post.