In the present day, Sam discovers that a sliver of the All-Spark or Cube, the font of life for the dying Autobot/Decepticon race, got stuck in one of his shirts. When it falls out, weird codes implant themselves in his brain. Outside of his head all heck breaks loose. Gremlin-like Decepticons mount an attack on his bedroom just as he prepares to say farewell to it and go to college. The codes turn out to be crucial to the survival of Autobot leader Optimus Prime and, of course, the Earth as we know it.
The movie tries to build to an Armageddon- (and Armageddon-) scale battle between Decepticons and Autobots and human warriors (i.e., American soldiers), and between Optimus Prime and a new Decepticon supreme leader, The Fallen.
Nothing, though, can build in a Michael Bay film, because this director dials up everything to the same intensity. He'd have been a great techie for Spinal Tap. Even the comic relief becomes as high-pitched and hard-sell as the action.
You know the stakes are life or death for the planet because the characters tell you so, and because the stakes always are mortal and global in this kind of movie. But the filmmakers don't keep their eye on the ball or on the Cube, either. They stuff the film with shtick - in fact, the whole movie is built with tons of shtick and gallons of sap. In this film's attempt at symmetry, Sam sees his mother bawl when he goes off to college only to learn that his father is the one who can't "let go"; Mikaela tries to squeeze an "I love you" out of her man only to end up telling him first.
John Turturro masticates the soundstage as former top-secret agent Simmons, now reduced to working in a family deli and keeping his own personal X-files in its basement. But he's far more engaging than a new character, Sam's college roommate, Leo (Ramon Rodriguez), a self-aggrandizing chatterbox who is determined to make a fortune on the Internet. And Leo is nowhere as embarrassing as a pair of jive-and-trash-talking Autobots whose dialogue is borderline-racist. When Sam asks them to read something, one says "Read? Uh-uh," and the other says, "We don't - we don't really do much reading."
All this might not have mattered if the movie delivered on the promise that the sight of enormous robots practicing martial arts would become like Crouching Tiger in the Tank, Hidden Dragon in the Engine. Autobots and Decepticons alike are whirling, somersaulting acro-bots. But all that distinguishes them visually in battle are splashes of color that soon get lost in a gray sludge. A prop critical to the final action is a key called "the Matrix of leadership." It's an unfortunate allusion, since Revenge of the Fallen is as poor as the Matrix sequels or the last two Pirates of the Caribbean movies. This movie begs for our attention but never rewards it.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
(Paramount/DreamWorks) Starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel and John Turturro. Directed by Michael Bay. Rated PG-13 for violence, language, and sexual material. Time 137 minutes.
