| Audience: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material |
| Profanity: | Some strong and crude language |
| Nudity/Sex: | Some vulgar sexual references and skimpy clothes |
| Alcohol/Drugs: | Character inadvertantly ingests drugs and behaves in a silly manner, some student drinking |
| Violence/Scariness: | Constant action peril and violence (not much blood) with many characters injured and killed |
| Diversity Issues: | Some ethnic humor that may be offensive |
| Movie Release Date: | June 25, 2009 |
| DVD Release Date: | October 20, 2009 |
Oh, dear. #TransformerFail
I truly loved the first Transformers movie. It was everything you need in a big summer explosion movie, with stupendous special effects, shot through with heart-thumping adrenaline, with just enough character and storyline to allow us to catch our breath and keep us interested. Our hero, high school senior Sam (Shia LeBeouf), is befriended by a car that turns into a friendly robot called Bumblebee, one of a cadre of good-guy transforming robots who fight against the bad-guy robots, called Decepticons. He is aided by a beautiful girl who is very good with cars (Megan Fox) and an armed services division led by Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel).
This sequel has some great special effects, but the story and the characters are poorly handled and the pacing is a mess. When the robots give a better performance than the humans, we have a problem. When the action is so complicated we can't figure out who is where and in some cases why they are there, we have a bigger problem. When the characters are so irritating we begin to consider rooting for the bad guys, well, you know what kind of a problem we have. And when the racial humor gets so completely out of hand that it becomes uncomfortable at best and genuinely disturbing at worst, it's a serious problem.
LeBoeuf is always appealing, Fox looks good stretching over machinery, and the movie briefly takes an interesting turn when both human and transformer characters show that they can learn from their mistakes and switch over to the side of the good guys. A stop at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum leads to Jetfire, an engaging junkpile of an autobot.
But it is too loud and it all goes on much too long. The bloated running time is well over two hours, overstuffed with pointless and increasingly annoying attempts at comedy -- Sam's mother accidentally gets high and talks about his sex life, Sam's father doesn't get high but talks about his sex life, good guy robots talk like the end men on a minstrel show, and Sam's college roommate is a loudmouth who wants to get with some ladies and shrieks like a little girl when he is scared, which happens a lot. There's another series of confrontations between a clueless bureaucrat and our know-better heroes. But the last movie's clueless bureaucrat somehow switches sides. I would complain that this is not adequately explained, but I don't really care. By this point, I began to think the Decepticons might have a point about how they could do better with our planet than we could.
Parents should know that this film includes very intense and graphic peril and "action" violence (meaning not much blood), many characters injured and killed, some strong and crude language and vulgar sexual humor, some humor based on racial and ethnic stereotypes, and a character who unintentionally takes drugs and there is some silly behavior while intoxicated.
Family discussion: Why is Sam reluctant to get involved? What should Captain Lennox do when he has orders that are contrary to what he believes is right? Did the racial humor in this movie seem appropriate?
If you like this, try: the first "Transformers" movie and the original television series and "Iron Man"
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Thank you, Rina. I was terribly disappointed, too.
Movie Mom: Please explain (explicitly) what you mean by "racial humor" and please point out specific references in the movie of this "racial humor".
I would suggest in the future, to be more explicit in your review if you are going to reference controversial topics, such as "racial humor".
I look forward to your response.
Thanks.
Thanks for the comment, LC. When I say "racial humor" or "gender humor" or "ethnic humor" it means comedy based on exaggerated or sterotypical racial, ethnic, or gender characteristics often associated with bias. In this film, I found he portrayal of the "gangsta" robots who could not/did not read and the portrayal of the Latino roommate as offensive and based on racial and ethnic stereotypes. What did you think of these portrayals?
The bad: The script was generally mediocre, most obviously pretty much every scene with Sam's parents (I don't know who thought the dogs would be a good idea.) For me, the single worst line of the film was when Optimus asks Galloway what happens if the Autobots leave and he's wrong and Lennox redundantly replies "That's a good question."
Also, I would have liked to see more of Isabel Lucas, who I know from the Australian soap opera Home and Away - the same one Chris Hemsworth (Kirk's father in the new Star Trek) was on, and around the same time. It would have been cool if they'd done something with her natural resemblance to Rachel Taylor, the analyst from the first one.
The good: It was a decent, generally coherent exploration of the Transformers mythos (speaking as a very casual fan of the first one), with more Transformer action than the first, which didn't start to get boring until the Egypt scenes. The Sam-Mikaela chemistry was still there and I liked the new characters Jetfire and Wheelie. I also didn't mind Leo, although I can see your point about the stereotypes in his and the Twins' portrayal (although I don't know that Jazz in the first one was much better).
Thanks so much, Toby! I wish you were the one producing the film; it would have been much better.
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