Review Roundup: “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”
The second Transformers flick, "Revenge of the Fallen," is out, and there have been quite a few reviews already that skewer and shred the Michael Bay robot explod-a-thon in some pretty entertaining ways. We've made a list of the most hilarious hits for your enjoyment.
First, a visual review by the creator of Nedroid:
"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.
"Combing through this audiovisual blitzkrieg for logic, substance and character is like looking for the poetic subtext of a monster-truck rally.
"Director Michael Bay's film - which has two settings, 'puree' and 'liquify' - is like that scene in 'Raging Bull,' when Joe Pesci slams a car door against the guy's head, over and over. Bay's sequel is the car door; the audience is the guy... The first, comparatively lucid 'Transformers' was a headache, but I sort of enjoyed it. It was a Slurpee brain-freeze of a blockbuster. 'Revenge of the Fallen' is more like listening to rocks in a clothes dryer for 2½ hours."
The Awl (via Kevin Church):
"Have you ever fallen into a city-sized Cuisinart that is grinding its way through a vast Chinese scrap metal field and had your face abraded with shards of aluminum and eyelash-size scraps of rusty torn iron, so all the skin is peeling off your face, your delicate nose-bones being flayed by grinding gear bits and yesterday's shredded microchips and at the same time that song "Citizen Soldier" from the National Guard commercials is blaring at top volume, and somewhere in the distance you can see that "The Hurt Locker" is screening for no good reason and there is sand inside what remains of your teeth and then Megan Fox float-flounces by (like the cow in "Twister"!) with her nipples nearly pouring out of her crop-top camisole and some kid is trying to give her a flower but she is like "I am sooo busy getting highly paid and even though the makeup department set their mirror to 'evening' instead of 'day' and so my beautiful perfect skin is sort of plastered needlessly with foundation, I am still the hottest sex doll on two legs," and so she doesn't take the flower, the poor sad flower, which stands for natural beauty, a flower which is then blenderized like a sad goose sucked into a jet turbine? If so, then you have seen the new "Transformers" movie."