The fools review of: Transformers 2

Michael Bay is a Transformer. Consider: In the 2007 Transformers movie and in this unwieldily titled sequel, robots from space try to defeat human adversaries by attacking from all directions with inexorable force, making resistance to their onslaught futile. Can it be mere coincidence that this also describes Bay's method of movie-making? If he ever wins an Oscar (and he's clearly trying with this bloated, two-and-a-half-hour monsterpiece) I expect to see him morph from man to Steadicam on the podium.

Not that there's much steadiness in Revenge of the Fallen. In spite of the putative defeat of the bad guys and the destruction of a dangerous doohickey called the Allspark in the last movie, there are now about twice as many robots, good and evil, wandering the Earth. Most of them fall into the category of annoying-and-slightly-racist-comic-relief, like the mini-bot Frenzy, who sounds like a speeded-up recording of Joe Pesci, or the jive-talkin' Skids and Mudflap, who don't do any favours to General Motors' public image.

The story finds Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) fully recovered from the events of the last movie, and heading off to college. He leaves behind girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox), though he'll call on her later. You don't put Fox in a movie and not give adequate screen time to her curves, just as you don't cast the U. S. Army and not have them blow up most of Egypt, significant portions of Shanghai and strategic bits of Paris and Washington. (It's easy to gloss over Fox's character, however, since Bay coats her in lip gloss, hair gloss, skin gloss and tooth gloss before placing her before the cameras.)

While packing for college, Sam stumbles on an overlooked splinter from the Allspark, which gives him seizures and makes him see strange symbols. (The underlying moral: Clean up your room!) This causes every Decepticon (bad robot) to give chase, while every Autobot (good robot) tries to protect him, and a few fence-sitters wait for the dust to clear. Which takes a while, since most of the action happens in the desert outside Cairo, with a giant robot vacuum blowing sand in everyone's eyes. (Notice, I didn't say the movie sucks.)

Many of these Cairo scenes feature images, locations and events eerily similar to those from the Indiana Jones series of films. LaBeouf, you'll recall, had a major role in the last of those; some actors get to keep their costumes, but he seems to have been allowed to plunder the scripts.

Speaking of scripts, let's assume for the sake of argument that writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Transformers) and Ehren Kruger (The Brothers Grimm) have penned one that makes sense. You still might find that a prolonged, mid-movie trip to the snack bar helps you understand it, if only by giving you time to clear your head.

Of course, you risk missing one of the 17 utterances of "the fallen shall rise!" that make the movie sound like an angry advertisement for a seniors' help line. On the other hand, you may walk out during a sequence that sounds like this -- BLAM! "Oh no!" POWIE! "runrunrun!" KER-PLOW! "Go!" BLAM! -- only to find it still going on when you come back 15 minutes later. That's if you choose to come back; the nice thing about summer movies is there's no coat on your seat to retrieve.

Should you stay, you'll find no end of action. (That's how it feels, literally: Action. Without. End.) Bay opens his movie in "17,000 BC" and an early meeting between humans and Transformers, back when all they could transform into was the wheel. From this vague, prehistoric beginning we move to a more precise and timely location: "Shanghai, 22:14 today." But regardless of when or where the robots do battle, their tactics differ little from their cousins, the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. They crash into each other and hurl heavy objects and insults. Optimus Prime, the head honcho, prefers vintage taunts like "punk-ass Decepticon!" as though channelling early Eastwood.

The humans -- by which I mean the audience as well as the characters in the movie -- are best advised to stay out of the way as Bay destroys things big-- the pyramids take a beating -- and small (really, a car/fruit stand collision in a US$200-million movie? Really?). Every so often, one of the flesh-and-blood types reveals a little wisdom. John Turturro, reprising his role as an agitated government agent, quotes from Screenwriting 101 when he tells another character: "Beginning. Middle. End. Facts. Details. Plot. Tell it." If only someone, human or otherwise, had been listening.