Sentient robots have poor time management skills.

They arrived long ago, did some shit, got sidetracked, and left a whole lot of exposition scattered all around our Earth. The events of the first Transformers (my DVD review, you are welcome in advance) showcased to us that you can have a big dumb action movie about toys that still manages to be fun. It also tried to affix a deep mythology to characters that are as fully developed as a 3rd grade love affair, resulting in people wanting less of that mythology and more of robots punching each other in the face. No shortage of thousands of people have typed in human words accessible by the people who made the first film that extraneous robot mythology is to a good movie as an anvil is to a newborn baby’s fontanelle.

There is more faux mythology in this film than in Joseph Cambell’s graveyard nightmares. These robots pontificate, often in messy and difficult to follow accents, for what seems like a lunar year. In reality it’s only two hours and twenty-nine minutes, but I’ve been told that when kickboxers and jungle men attack your bound form for two and a half hours it feels like at least three hours and five minutes. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is sort of like that except the jungle men inexplicably sometimes put their unwashed penises up the leg of your cargo shorts and the kickboxers are the kind that shoot bullwhips from their toes.

TWO HOURS AND TWENTY-NINE MINUTES? What the fuck is happening to my aging form? My ass falls asleep because of robots? There are at least seventy minutes of this film that could have easily been thrown away (or better yet, not funded and filmed). There are massive sequences devoted to Shia Lebeouf’s Sam Witwicky character’s college career, because we are seriously concerned about his education. We finally get some time alone with Megan Fox’s character Slow Motion Tits and her dad. We get to see what a Michael Bay Species movie would be like thanks to an inexplicable Decepticon in HUMAN DISGUISE. Now tell me… if they could be human beings, wouldn’t it make more sense to hide AS THEM? Not cars and boom boxes and portable toilets? We get to see a glimpse of what a Michael Bay Gremlins movie would be like as Mrs. Witwicky is comically tortured by household appliances gone robot. We also get to see her on drugs! Shia’s MOTHER! If anyone is buying a ticket to this film to see the further adventures of Shia’s mom, they need to lock themselves into the Oedipus suite at the Charon Motel and throw away the skeleton key. We get to see John Turturro butcher meat! We get to see the dude from The Anniversary Party scold a robot IN A MEETING! We get to see what robots would be like through the creative racist eyes of Archie Bunker. Seemingly every side character is given ample screen time (though it’s great to see Glenn Morshower back as… GENERAL MORSHOWER, since he’s a king among men), because absolutely NO HUMAN BEING DEMANDED IT. The only reason Bernie Mac’s car saleman isn’t in this film is because the actor IS DEAD. Even then I’m sure a meeting was had where someone asked if anyone had a spare CGI Bernie Mac handy on a 5.25 floppy disk.

Sentient robots could learn a thing or two from the Deliverance porch banjo bumpkin.

He had his day mapped out. Dude woke up, shit in his sock, ate a hearty breakfast of milk and rocks, and went to work playing retard tunes for anyone who mistaked their way into his sphere of influence. Midday he’d head to the bridge, have a fifty foot pee pee and play more batshit music. When his fingers were tired from plucking and touching his raw moneymaker he’d curl up in a tree, snack on firecrackers, and fall asleep to the sounds of the dumb forest. Wake, find a shitsock, and repeat.

These robots have no idea what they’re doing. The good guys take orders from politicans and cry when they can’t go to college with Shia Lebeouf and the bad guys float in outer space waiting for a chance to have a plan. They are easily swayed from team to team and one is perfectly content to transform from a gorgeous and robust stealth fighter into a haggard, BEARDED robot with a cane. Much has been said about the cane. I don’t mind the cane. I do mind Michael Caine, but that’s because he raped me in my youth when I was an extra in Michael Caine Rapes Boys 2. The cane is fine. It reminds me of the legendary Old B.O.B. in The Black Hole. As opposed to Michael Caine in the black hole, which I resent him for. I mind the ROBOT BEARD. The robot has a beard.

That means at one point there was robot STUBBLE. Little annoying metal bumps on a once proud Jetfire face. Over time and neglect (Cybertron’s last razor was destroyed in the war) the stubble took root and turned into a fabulous Richard Karn facebush and the transforming being was a hit in the 70’s. Now as an elderly (and uselessly British) fellow, the beard does little for Jetfire except get him backstage at ZZ Top shows. The robot has a beard.

He’s also been around since early Man, when people believed is silly stuff like monsters and vengeful animal gods and that their own sex organs were awesome. Back then they didn’t transform, because that would be silly!

But in the twenties, they transformed like HELL!

You will see grainy old spy photographs of a Model-T Ford (or some other old, dumb car) Decepticon. You will. I promise. These robots also probably need to realize that being “in disguise” on Earth is pretty silly, especially if compelled to wear the emblem showcasing your allegiance.

“I’m hidden and not of this planet, please disregard the angry telltale icon on my grill!”

Sentient robots need to not be black people.

Yes there are a pair of painfully stereotypical African American robots with big lips and poor grammar who can’t keep their shit together. Scratch that. They are not African American. They aren’t even negro robots. They are Mississippi Burning tainted COLOREDS. That is the level of grace given these characters. I was mystified that they didn’t convince an enemy to transform into a giant metallic box of fried chicken. As a white man, I was offended. Were I black, first of all I’d probably wonder why I became black at age 36, but then I’d probably look into some sort of inroads to a location where I could corner the makers of this film and punch them in the liver.

I apologize if I missed the part where the robots did research and wanted to be “in disguise” amidst all the other thirty foot tall metal assholes hanging outside the convenience store near the Atlanta Zoo.

Sentient robots need to not entrust the survival of men and robots to a guy with the last name Witwicky.

Would anyone vote a guy with that name into office? OK, pretend there’s no dude named Newt Gingrich…

You entrust a Witwicky with delivering a pizza. Maybe you can allow a Witwicky to do a tint job on your Fiero. But in an entertainment industry rife with ‘CHOSEN ONES’, Sam Witwicky (no disrespect to Shia Leboeuf whom I love and feel does the best he can), ranks somewhere between the Mothra Twins and Man-Thing’s waterer.

Sentient robots are less interesting to Michael Bay than Megan Fox.

But I have to admit, I was with him for a few minutes. Then I got very tired of seeing Megan Fox in slow motion, at normal speed, or in Mullet Time (Bullet Time, but with muscle cars).

The biggest lapse in logic isn’t the transforming robots, Rainn Wilson as a professor, or that little dogs can fuck in a treehouse. It’s that Megan Fox’s character Shiny Breasts manages to stay perfectly oily and with perfect makeup through 59 explosions where hundreds of pounds of debris (in reality it’s just painted styrofoam, SHHHHHHH) blast in and around her.

I wanted robot destruction and as little attempts at depth as possible and very little human drama. I got the filmic equivalent of a hot rod magazine with boring female skin and tons of attempts at Michael Bay creating a short bus Lord of the Rings with transforming toy robots.

If this film ran at normal speed instead of slow motion it’d be an hour and a half and still too long.

Sentient robots need to go fuck themselves.

The robot has a beard.