
We went to the cinema tonight and decided on
Transformers - Revenge of the Fallen, and I find it difficult to hide my dissapointment - well sort of...
The film has more holes than plot - many of the things that take place in the movie have origins you can only guess at, and there are miles and miles of exposition (didn't they teach
Michael Bay about "show don't tell" in film school?). Unfortunately that stretches the film out - a story they could have told in an hour and a half runs to two and half hours. I'm sure it goes down well with twelve year old boys due to the constant pouting of co-star
Megan Fox, but it's not really up to the standards of a more mature audience. To add insult to injury they even have two characters, The Twins, who are a convincing stand in for Jar Jar Binks, dialogue included...
So I can't recommend this film... except for one caveat. If you're into huge robots (one of them with two big, swinging wrecking balls for... well you get the idea!) or you're a petrolhead of some description (because there are transforming motorbikes, sportscars, hot hatches, trucks, cranes, fighter aircraft - the list goes on) and if you can suspend disbelief for long enough, you will absolutely love it. The CGI is utterly breathtaking - not one frame looks "computer generated", it all looks convincing - realistically gritty. Rumour has it that the computers were working so hard to render the scenes in the movie that a section of
ILM's server farm burnt out during the process!
If you're looking for an intelligent movie you really will have to look elsewhere, but for the smell of hot metal and the crackling sound of gunfire and the thunder of huge explosions, I don't think that this movie will be beaten this summer :)