Transformers 2

[Cipher]

Saw it. Not sure how I feel, except a few times more retarded.

It miraculously managed to fail at everything the first movie succeeded at, and succeed at everything the first movie failed at.

Unlike the first movie, the robots got screen time, looked better, the action sequences were entertaining and easy to follow, and there were actually a lot of cool homages for long-time fans. Great!

However, while the first movie had decently charming human sequences, and a handful of real chuckles, the human interaction and "comedy" here were f*cking terrible.

Spoiler:

Behold Sam's painfully cheesey romantic subplot. Marvel at Michael Bay's inability to present a realistic college campus (that was NOT a frat house. No f*cking way). Revel in the height of comedy as Sam's mother responds like she's done a fistful of hallucinogenics after accidentally eating a pot brownie! Dozens of other painfully cheesey jokes abound! Robot testicles? You got 'em, and sadly that was one of the funniest parts. Joke about "finding you a tighter shirt" was alright. That one gets a pass.

And look for the two biggest crimes against race relations and humor you've seen since the Wyan's brothers last film. No review can understate this enough, as it basically pissed on the smoldering remains of dignity this movie had left.

Spoiler:

F*cking Mudflap and Skids, and their zany Vaudevillian antics. Even if they weren't the most unsettling racist charicatures...ever, they'd still be painfully unfunny. In fact, at least the racism added some shock value, so there's that. That may have been for the best.

EDIT--Apparently some people didn't find them racist. I really wish I didn't. I'm the last person to get offended by anything, and I feel like an alarmist dick when I have to point fingers at robot stereotypes. With the right levels of irony, I actually enjoy race jokes. Really offensive ones. But Mudflap and Skids were just racist as sh*t, and not in any kind of witty, humorous way. They were dropping ebonics right and left followed by jokes about how they didn't read. At best, you could say that Bay's simply using the absurdity of ghetto culture for some laughs. After all, it's not directly tied to race. At worst, and more accurately, you could say they were total Sambo characters.

It's all I can hope that they replace Wheelie as the most despised characters among Transformers fans.

All the negative aspects aside, it was a decent two-hour popcorn flick. Unfortunately, it was three-hours long.