Director: Michael Bay
Writer(s): Ehren Kruger/Roberto Orci/Alex Kurtzman

Cast:
Shia LaBeouf – Sam Witwicky
Megan Fox – Mikaela Banes
Josh Duhamel – Major Lennox
Tyrese Gibson – USAF Master Sergeant Epps
John Turturro – Agent Simmons
Ramon Rodriguez – Leo Spitz

Preamble:
Transformers finds itself in the filmmaking limbo of a movie that’s too bad to be tolerable, and not bad in the specific ways that can make it fun to ridicule.

Plot Points:
At the end of the first film, Megatron was sunk to the bottom of the ocean and the Decepticons were sent scrambling. This time they’ve found a way to bring him back and are looking for revenge. The Allspark cube from the first Transformers film was destroyed, but it turns out there are two fragments remaining. The first is guarded by the military in a top secret underground location. The second was hidden in Sam’s jacket for the last two years (apparently he couldn’t feel the difference in weight), and is conveniently found when he’s getting ready to leave Bumblebee behind and move to college.

The Meat:
Let’s get the positives out of the way so we can talk about the other 99% of the movie. Megan Fox is stunning, Michael Bay knows how to shoot her, and the explosions are great.

Scary or annoying?

While Sam extensively handled the allspark in the previous film without issue, the shard gives him uncontrollable visions in which advanced knowledge and understanding spew from him like a broken faucet. More amazing is the fact that, when Sam and Optimus Prime discuss the Allspark shortly thereafter, Sam somehow neglects to tell Optimus that he found a second piece in his jacket. The Decepticons are focused not only on retrieving the underground fragment, but the shard that Sam has given to his girlfriend. No explanation is given for why they actually want to kill him, but we’ll just assume it’s because they don’t like him very much. So as a recap, he not only knows that it’s a prized possession, but he (a) doesn’t tell Optimus about it (b) doesn’t use it to help Optimus when he desperately needs its power later in the film, and (c) doesn’t realize that putting it in his girlfriend’s hands will put her life in grave danger. This all despite the fact that when the shard falls out of his hands it radiates and rips through three floors in his parents’ house, as well as transforming nearby machines into mini Decepticons that attack him instantly. So let us at least say this, Sam isn’t overprotective.

Once the Decepticons realize Sam has the other piece, they send a female terminator type of machine to stalk him in college. Bringing in the element of evil machines disguised as humans draws comparisons to stories from the Terminator, Matrix, and Battlestar Galactica fiction. Transformers does not compare favorably to any of these. The fact that other people in the college know who she is suggests she was planted at the college well ahead of Sam’s arrival – representing a plot hole that is too gigantic to delve into. Sam, somehow, doesn’t realize her true nature, allowing for a conveniently timed visit from his actual girlfriend whom he had just stood up on a virtual date just as this machine is on top of him in bed. So, let us say this, Sam isn’t very observant. At this point, one realizes Transformers 2 is simply a bad 1980’s script for a farcical teenage comedy – with robots and explosions. Doesn’t sound like a good combination, does it?

A later side plot involves Sam’s college roommate, Leo, who runs a website dedicated to exposing the coverup of the Transformers’ presence. How it is that these giant machines, which constantly fight in crowded city environments, can still be the subject of a coverup is another unexplained plot hole. This is what happens when you have three people work on one script. For the rest of the film, Leo comes along for what can only be described as semi-comic relief. This doesn’t make any sense once John Turturro’s Agent Simmons is brought back into things, and his panicky nature doesn’t make sense as Sam’s character already covers that ground repeatedly. Then again it makes perfect sense for a movie where the answer to every question is “more”. It should also be noted that Simmons’ mock movie-voiceover sounds exactly like the actual narratives in the movie. It’s frustrating when your work is so bad that it accidentally mocks itself.

It gets worse: robots have dangling balls, use fluids like urine, are described as “shedding metal” with American soldiers, and in one case even hump a human’s leg like a dog. This is thrown in just in case the audience forgets the two earlier scenes where real life dogs are shown humping. Sam’s mother apparently has no idea what weed brownies are, which is incredible considering her age. A snooty stuffed shirt from the government is introduced to give the audience a human to dislike. His pandering, one dimensional character makes Bill Pullman’s President Clint Eastwood routine in ‘Independence Day’ look Shakespearian by comparison. Sam’s girlfriend figures out not to talk on the phone (maybe that’s something to think about when you’re fighting machines?), but the military yaps away while the Decepticons listen to every conversation they have. Sort of like when NASA scientists built Bruce Willis’ design upside down in ‘Armageddon’. Shia’s real life broken hand is not written into the script – it simply shows up with a bandage and a splint 2/3 of the way through the movie in the middle of the desert.

The “Fallen” from the title is revealed to be an ancient robotic threat to peace on Earth. This only opens up more inane plot holes, like the original Autobots sacrificing their lives in order to create a tomb for a sun-destroying machine. This instead of destroying it – apparently they were leaving it viable just in case modern scientists developed a more environmentally friendly purpose for a machine designed to end all life on the planet. There are also tons of shots of the military and all the gadgets and vehicles Michael Bay is fascinated with. Did we mention teleporting? There are teleporting Transformers – and they use walking canes. The horrible editing concludes with an hour long ending fight scene. The greatest injustice in having to sit through this triplechanger train wreck, is that it didn’t even have the decency to be short.