We posted our exten­sive Trans­form­ers 2 review up on Sun­day night — it focuses on explain­ing the sto­ry­line step by step with an analy­sis of the new char­ac­ters and robots from a fan’s per­spec­tive. Some fans were not happy with the out­come. View Movie Chron­i­cles review

USA Today

Review

Mean­while, pyra­mids are dis­man­tled, bod­ies hurled through the air and facial ori­fices probed. And all the metal on dis­play is more brassy than precious.

No amount of tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­ity can make up for an ago­niz­ingly wit­less story, clumsy dia­logue and unin­ter­est­ing characters.

Robert Ebert

Review

The bat­tle scenes are bewil­der­ing. A Bot makes no visual sense any­way, but two or three tan­gled up together cre­ate an incom­pre­hen­si­ble con­fu­sion. I find it amus­ing that crea­tures that can unfold out of a Camaro and stand four sto­ries high do most of their fight­ing with…fists. Like I say, dumber than a box of sta­ples. They have tiny lit­tle heads, except for Starscream® [Jet­fire], who is so ancient he has an alu­minum beard.

Aware that this movie opened in Eng­land seven hours before Chicago time and the morn­ing papers would be on the streets, after writ­ing the above I looked up the first reviews as a real­ity check. I was reas­sured: “Like watch­ing paint dry while get­ting hit over the head with a fry­ing pan!” (Brad­shaw, Guardian); “Sums up every­thing that is most tedious, crass and despi­ca­ble about mod­ern Hol­ly­wood!” (Tookey, Daily Mail); “A giant, lum­ber­ing idiot of a movie!” (Edwards, Daily Mir­ror). The first Amer­i­can review, Todd Gilchrist of Cin­e­mat­i­cal, reported that Bay’s “ambi­tion runs a mile long and an inch deep,” but, in a spir­ited defense, says “this must be the most movie I have ever expe­ri­enced.” He is bull­ish on the box office: it “feels des­tined to be the biggest movie of all time.” It’s cer­tainly the biggest some­thing of all time.

EW

Review

At last year’s Comic-Con con­ven­tion, sev­eral rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Revenge of the Fallen appeared with the slo­gan ”Big­ger. F—ing. Robots.” on their T-shirts, and Bay, tak­ing that cue, knows just what his job is rel­a­tive to the first Trans­form­ers (2007): It’s to make the movie huger, louder, smashier, and — on the mechan­i­cal level — more crazily, auda­ciously imag­i­na­tive. He suc­ceeds. Revenge of the Fallen show­cases an infec­tiously diverse brigade of chat­tery unfold­ing con­trap­tions, from mechan­i­cal grem­lins that trans­form out of kitchen appli­ances to one that erupts from a vin­tage air­plane to a coed with a tongue of steel. Each of these creature-gizmos has a mar­velous, organic flu­id­ity — they don’t just move, they clank and roll. And it was an inspired touch to set the film’s most fero­cious bat­tle amid the Pyra­mids, fea­tur­ing a Decep­ti­con so humungous it just about wad­dles with power. Revenge of the Fallen may be a mas­sive over­dose of pop­corn greased with motor oil. But it knows how to feed your inner 10-year-old’s appetite for destruction.

Chicago Tri­bune (1.5/5)

Review

There’s a lazy cyn­i­cism to “Trans­form­ers 2,” from the dubi­ous comic-relief “ghetto” ‘bots known as the Twins, to the rump-in-the-air intro­duc­tion of Fox’s char­ac­ter, to the gen­eral air of mil­i­taris­tic fetishism. The chief human antag­o­nist is an Obama admin­is­tra­tion secu­rity adviser who keeps push­ing diplo­matic solu­tions while the Decep­ti­cons kill, kill, kill. Near the end an aged Auto­bot, wal­ing away at his ene­mies atop a pyra­mid, mut­ters the line “I’m too old for this crap.” No mat­ter, pal. You’re not in the tar­get demographic.

AICN

Review
Harry says TRANSFORMERS 2 is foul mouthed, racist & misog­y­nis­tic! It also runs an hour too long!

All that said though — my nephew loved the film, he’s nearly nine. He hated the kissy stuff. But he loved pretty much every­thing else. He adored Mud­flap and Skids — which is more dis­turb­ing than any­thing else. The amount of foul lan­guage pop­ping out of their mouths is aston­ish­ing, espe­cially with the shit, bitch, muther…, ass, pussy, etc…

What the hell is this stuff doing in a TRANSFORMERS movie?

Any­one?

This film was con­ceived dur­ing the WRITER’S STRIKE — with Michael Bay up at ILM doing ani­mat­ics on the big action sequences. Then when the strike was over, he brought in Orci & Kurtz­man to string the scenes together. Which oddly enough was kinda how Hitch­cock and Lehmann worked on NORTH BY NORTHWEST (to rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent results). And then the roto-rooter of screen­writ­ers, Ehren Kruger did the mop up work on the film. At least that’s how I’ve heard it went down.

The film will make a mint, unde­servedly so. Steven Spiel­berg should be embar­rassed to have his name on shoddy sto­ry­work like this. Shame on you Steven. Kids will be lin­ing up for this — and they’ll be met with dog fuck­ing, cussing, racial stereo­types and more. I seri­ously won­der if Spiel­berg was think­ing of Mud­flap & Skids as he watched the inau­gu­ra­tion of Barack Obama — because he’d read the script at that point, he knew what his name was bring­ing, and yet he still had the gall to attend.

The film­mak­ers, stu­dio and toy­mak­ers behind this film should be ashamed. To spend this type of money to bring this sort of hurt­ful and repug­nant work to screen — it is an insult to every DREAM that so many have WORKed for, for years.

I’d like to ask you not to sup­port this film, but those of you with young boys, I know there isn’t a chance. But real­ize you’ll be tak­ing them to see a film with the low­est forms of humor, stereo­types and racism around. Not only that, but its pack­aged for our chil­dren. Which makes it all the more offensive.

Rot­ten Tomatoes

Rat­ings

The movie cur­rently sits at a low 30% from top crit­ics, the com­mu­nity give it 68%.