Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Wow. What went wrong? Let's all be honest here: you shouldn't expect much from a movie based on a cartoon that was based on a series of toys. Still, somehow director Michael Bay managed to make magic happen with the first film, concocting a light romp in which giant robots beat the snot out of each other for our amusement. It was funny, exciting, quickly paced, and pleasantly inconsequential. This film, on the other hand, is a morass of terrible screenwriting on top of embarrassingly bad acting, and an air of over-inflated self importance. Even the exceptionally glossy sheen of absurdly good special effects can't overcome this half-cocked mess of gaping plot holes and horrendously irritating characters. Meanwhile the action, the one part you could hope to count on, is nothing but a few slow motion explosions splattered over a some confusing whip-pans. There are a pair of decent action sequences in here, but twenty-five minutes of awesome is not worth enduring two additional, excruciating hours of tripe. This film goes down about as easy as swallowing a cheese-grater.

3 out of 10.