Director Michael Bay goes boom for big battle bots melee

July 3, 3:23 PMDes Moines Movie ExaminerAndy Chung

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It has been two years since Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) came under the crossfire between the battle of good and evil with the Autobots and Decepticons. Now he is ready to mark a new chapter in his life by heading off to college. Determined to living the life of a normal teen, Sam is committed to retaining his romantic relationship with Mikaela (Megan Fox) but isn’t ready to tell her that he loves her.

Before he ventures off to college, he succumbs to the same vision that plagued his grandfather in which he finds a splinter, which is a map that provides the location of the Transformer’s life energy source. Sam begins to see these mysterious symbols -  key to the rise of the Decepticon race and for the Fallen (voiced by Tony Todd), one of the original, ancient Transformers. Meanwhile the Autobots led by Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) are working with the humans spearhead by Major Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and USAF Master Sergeant Epps (Tyrese Gibson) on Operation Nest in which they hunt down Decepticons that have crashed on Earth.

Sam’s freshman year of academics, partying, attracting the eyes of fellow student, Alice (Isabel Lucas), and getting his dorm room roommate Leo (Ramon Rodriguez), who runs a conspiracy website, caught up in the mess is placed on temporary hiatus when the Decepticons come looking for him. His mind contains the information that discloses the location of the device and the key needed to jumpstart the machine.

Optimus Prime, who is the only one who is able to stop the Fallen from achieving his mission and conquering the planet, is taken down in an ambush led by the recently freed and reanimated Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving), an apprentice to the Fallen. With Optimus gone, Megatron decide to no longer hide from the humans and seeks out Sam in return for sparing Earth. The bureaucratic liaison to the White House, Galloway (John Benjamin Hickey) decides that it’s in the best interest for the Autobots to leave Earth and to comply with the demands of the Decepticons.

It now becomes a race between the humans and the Decepticon with Sam, a wanted fugitive, who must use his vision of the mysterious ancient symbols to find the device and the key to save the human race and reactivate Optimus. Helping Sam to decipher the symbols is former Agent Simmons (John Turturro) banished to the world of counter deli meat and running conspiracy websites based upon the Transformers.

Director Michael Bay known for featuring big explosion, gorgeous women and providing racial stereotypes continues these trends in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” Like any of Mr. Bay’s films, audience are going to be astonished by the high level of details that the action provides led by the impressive CGI team, which will be overlooked again for its work in the Oscars in the special effects category. The storyline can be quite hard to follow and keep up with as he attempts to tell the history of the Transformers and how the humans are involved in the mix.

Mr. LaBeouf reprises his character Sam by leaving off from the first film as an adolescent that is not ready to bear the responsibility of being a diplomatic representative of the Autobots. His character progresses in that he understands of the task given to him by the Autobots which he must perform. Miss. Fox, who surely has no problem in drawing the viewer’s gauze with her every presence as a Greek goddess, needs to work on her acting ability if she still wants to be compared as the next Angelina Jolie. Mr. Duhamel plays to strength of his one key-note character as a leader who is not going to get pushed aside from a bureaucratic suit. Mr. Gibson continues to provide the urban voice and sidekick to his Caucasian friend.

The problem is the film’s comedic approach in which humor is derived from doggy domination, robot humping Miss Fox’s leg and the overplayed comedic presence of Sam's parents, Ron and Judy Witwicky (Kevin Dunn and Julie White) treading familiar territories of sexual romances and ingestion of marijuana laced brownies. A lot of controversy has been surrounded with two of the Autobots Mudflap (voiced by Reno Wilson) and Skids (voiced by Tom Kenny) because of their linguistics, mannerism, appearance and their illiteracy of promoting racial stereotypes has been found in prior films by Mr. Bay and shouldn't be taken seriously.

The second time around, the film focuses much more on the Transformers and hits when it features the robot battles but takes a step back in attempting to incorporate the human element of the story. If the third Transformer film is to be heralded by Mr. Bay he needs to find an even overture that features both the human and robotic elements of the film without sacrificing the quality of storytelling of those components.