I’m going to start out by saying I really REALLY did not enjoy even one minute of this film. To say this film was terrible would be the understatement of the year. Michael Bay appears to have truly mastered the art of converting vast amounts of cash into vast amounts of steaming excrement.

While the first Transformers movie was a little shallow in the plot department, the second movie takes this a step further. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen actually shares a lot of the depth characteristics of a toddler’s inflatable paddling pool. Literally not more than 1% of the total screen time was dedicated to any kind of plot line. It was ALL action.

The action scenes in general were all pretty spectacular, that is if all you want out of an action scene is explosions and scrap metal. At some point during the design process, some pranksters must’ve sneaked in and swapped the original design sketches for pictures of crushed cars and abandoned washing machines. The result is an eye-scarring mess of tin cans and car parts rushing around the screen for two and a half hours.

And now onto some more technical criticisms. Acting in general was of a pretty low standard. Shia LaBeouf pretending to be possessed by robotic knowledge was particularly cringe-worthy. Surprisingly Megan Fox has somehow managed to acquire acting talents in the past 2 years. Her performance was the best in the film in my opinion, and I’m not just saying that because she looked ridiculously hot throughout, although that undoubtedly did help.

The camera shots were also unusually uninspiring. If I had to guess, I would say Michael Bay happened to know someone who owned a helicopter and thus hiring a helicopter proved to be more economical than hiring a camera boom. Most of the camera work in the film is just generally all round pretty boring.

Cheesy robot-spoken lines make a reappearance in this film but turn out to be far from the biggest audio related problem. That annoying metallic groaning/creaking noise in the trailer? Yeah, it makes a comeback. Not really sure what purpose it serves but it’s definitely over used.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. The one-eyed cat/dog thing was a highlight… Well, I guess it IS mostly doom and gloom. And the length! Ninety minutes of this garbage would be enough to make any sane person succumb to sectioning, but sadly this movie is not a mere ninety minutes long.

It is a full one hundred and forty four minutes long.