Transformers 2 negatives

There has been a lot of controversy over last summer's blockbuster "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen". Some have called a fun popcorn movie while others have called it a piece of garbage. While I did not hate the film, I found it could have been much better. The main problem is that the story and writing is pretty weak which is a big problem for a movie that is two hours and twenty minutes long. There are lots of spots where it is difficult to figure out just what is going on. Some might say that a good plot is not the reason people attend a movie like this and you should just turn your brain off. Well I don't believe one should have to turn off their brain in order to enjoy a movie.

There are also other areas that could have been improved. The film has been praised for it special effects and graphics. This may be true as the giant robots look very realistic, but director Michael Bay messes up the action sequences by filming the camera way too close to the robots and adopting the shakey cam technique. This makes it not only difficut to tell who is winning the fight, but its also hard tell who's fighting who. The film is also filled with plot holes. At one point, a human turns out to be an enemy robot in disguise, which makes no sense as the whole premise is supposed to be about cars that turn into giant robots, not humans. Another reason this film did not meet my expectations is because the humor often falls flat. Some of the writing seemed geered more towards children than adults.

In addition, the sidekicks in this film, Leo and two robots called Mudflap and Skids, were supposed to provide comic relief, but instead came off as more annoying than funny. One of the few bright spots were Shia Labeuf and Megan Fox who provided some funny lines and were atleast interesting, unlike a lot of other characters on the screen. Despite this, the film still managed to become one of the highest grossing movie of the year, and was liked by audiences. Everyone has their own opinion, but I believe people will delude themselves into liking a movie as long as it has eye candy like cool robots or Megan Fox. All in all, I found this movie to be a letdown as it was ok, but could have used a better story and script.

Alex Daniels