Transformers: Robot Fall Down Go Boom
Langdon Auger
I am not necessarily going to rip this movie a new one. Let me explain.
The second Transformers film is a big dumb action movie but I really don't feel it can be called a bad movie, mainly because it is a sequel. For a movie to be truly bad you have to have the expectation of quality.
That is why The Godfather Part III is a worse movie than Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo. If the first Rob Schneider movie didn't put you off seeing the sequel then you got the movie you deserved. Clearly the last Godfather movie had much higher expectations attached to it and thus is far more disappointing. For a movie to be really bad there has to be an expectation of quality and disappointment in the film's ability to achieve that quality. That's how Rob Schnieder made a better movie than Al Pacin and how Transformers: Robot Fall Down Go Boom in this sense, is a good movie.
If the first movie didn't prepare you for sledge hammer quality special effects and sound design then the fault is yours, not the movie. Both Transformers movies are dopey and have a lot of scenes that don't make sense.
My favorite particular scene is the new one is where the douche Shia Lebouf is telling his parents they have to go to safety so he can run across an exploding field of Decepticons. You guys know this scene, it's in every movie where one guy yells "you have to go" and the other yells "I'm not leaving you." Well, it happens here because Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are talentless hacks who put the most cliched and garbled crap in their movie scripts (they also did this year's Star Trek, not exactly renowned for its coherent and fully flushed out story).
Alright, so douchebag is yelling at his parents and he finally convinces them to go. He then turns around and mega-hottie Megan Fox tells him she is not leaving without him and he decides to take her along. I guess he just didn't want to have the same argument again, but reversing his "I have to go alone" position was literally the next line of dialogue after making a big scene of getting his parents to safety.
The other dopey scene was where they go to the Smithsonian to get help from an old transformer who is hiding there as a stealth bomber. That's the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian in Washington D.C. a densely urbanized swampland. So explain to me how they break out the back of the Smithsonian and they are suddenly in the desert. I have an idea, why not put in the script a line about going to the "Arizona Air and Space Museum." That explains the desert. This is also the scene where the mini robot humps Megan Fox's leg and then the robot teleports them somehow to Egypt. I don't know why he did that. Or how he did it. It never made sense.
But as dopey as this movie is you can't hate it that much if you even mildly enjoyed the first movie. I don't understand the screamingly negative reviews. Here is my challenge to all the detractors of the film. We can do this in the comments section. Explain your reason for hating the movie, but use this phrase at the start of your sentence: "Unlike the first movie, I disliked this Transformers film because…" Try it out.
"Unlike the first movie I disliked this transformers film because of the negative depiction of African Americans." You know, as opposed to how the first film showed a delicate and nuanced portrayal of black people and the challenges facing them in a white dominated society.
"Unlike the first movie, I disliked this transformers film because the plot didn't make much sense and the action scenes had big explosions that seemed to come from nowhere." Right, as opposed to the first film and its Chekhovian commitment to dramatic development.
When you frame all the complaints from the film in this way, you see it really is not that bad of a movie. Unless of course you didn't like the first film, in which case more power to you, rip the thing apart.
And now for a special Literary Brothel treat, an exclusive clip from Transformers: Robot Fall Down Go Boom.
-LA
