More Than Meets the Eye

Despite what people kept telling me and what reviewers kept saying again and again (even more to list) how TERRIBLE this movie is, I went to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last night.

Citizen Kane it's not. I did not expect to see anything near that, nor did I expect to see a cohesive plot (or one at all), well-written dialogue (both human and robot), OR even good acting (which I did; Rainn Wilson as the stuffy Princeton Astronomy professor and Shia Labeouf channeling an alien language while having an epileptic seizure is not an easy feat). What I did expect were explosions, gratuitous body shots and ROBOTS.

So if you like robots, explosions, and above all, AMERICA, you WILL like this movie.

Seriously, hating this movie is as good as hating the USA. Yes, that's even hating the USA with Obama as president. This world of transformers protecting the human race is a world with Obama as president, and as the Autobots team up with the US Army to protect our kind from rogue Decepticons around the world, our robot heroes masquerade as automobiles that come from the good ol' US of A. Their fearless leader, Optimus Prime, is a flame-accented semi that can't be made anywhere else, those waste of CGI production jive-speaking twins were Chevy Aveos, and despite my personal misgivings of changing his car, Bumblebee is no longer a VW Beetle but a Camaro in this Michael Bay franchise. All the same, because he's a sexy Camaro...a sexy AMERICAN MADE Camaro.

And what of these Decepticons? The opening scene set in Shanghai, China has the US Army and the US-car masked Autobots battle this Chinese machine Decepticon that is defeated pretty easily. Why? NOT a US-made machine! This creature was assisted by some Decepticon automobile, but it was a European-made AUDI, which was cut cleanly in half by what? An American-made car/Autobot.

And when The Fallen, this ancient bad guy Decepticon is once again ready to wreak havoc on our fleshy human-dominated world, Decepticons guised as machines around the world spring back to life, including a Volvo earth digger? Come on! Let's kick these robots in their balls! Because they have them! At least one of them has a pair, and he certainly got dinged in its metal 'gnads! YEAH! That's what the Decepticons get for killing Optimus Prime! USA! USA!

This movie is so USA that after Sam Witwicky's parents drop their son off to Princeton, an ivy league college, they head to Paris, France, only for Mr. Witwicky to dine at a French cafe drinking an All-American Budweiser as Mrs. Witwicky spits out her escargot dish.

I'm not going to glaze over the gaping plot holes. Sure, they're plot holes in a membrane-thin plot, but even the most patriotic can catch them. Because surprisingly enough, this movie DOES make you think. I was preoccupied marveling at how Megan Fox's character managed to keep her lips eternally bubblegum lip glossy pink and her mascara perfect and not smudgy even after traveling across the US by plane then being thrown around and teleported to Egypt, or how much work it took for her to keep her riding khakis scot-free after all the running around the desert and explosions bent on exploding her pretty face. More importantly, I kept wondering what went through John Turturro's head when he came out of his trailer every day while filming this movie and how much he had to prepare for his gratuitous butt shot. I was also waiting to one of Megan Fox's boob to pop out her very cute top, not because I necessarily wanted to see it, but because I thought it was a physical inevitability with all the running, jumping, sliding on the ground she was doing while running for her life...AND THE REST OF HUMANITY AND OUR SOLAR SYSTEM AS WE KNOW IT.

So there you go. Explosions that are even simplified by slow-moing the good parts of the explosions. Robots. Lots of robots. Robots fighting each other. Panty shots of nubile coeds, biker chicks and John Turturro. What more are you expecting? If you are expecting more, I have Delicatessen as my Netflix rental right now, but that's so un-American of you.