Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 2009

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Is it the worst movie of the summer? Possibly. Will everybody see it? Probably. Read more

Ben Lyons, At the Movies: It's confusing and excessive and it just missed the mark completely. Read more

Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine: The movie is like the play date from hell, the kind where a crew of children reduce your home to rubble and conduct endless bouts of loud war on the living-room floor while you ponder the propriety of opening a bottle of wine. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: Michael Bay has learned that action film fans like to see action. He's taken his head out of his keister and his camera out of the Transformers' tailpipes. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: The best thing about "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is that it's perhaps the funniest movie of the year ... "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is not as bad as "Transformers"; somehow, in the face of long odds, it is actually worse. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the director's subject is as blatant and consistent as his cluttered mise-en-scene. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Much of the movie is computer-generated hash, weightless even with nonstop BOOMS and METAL GROANS and THUDS. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Compared to this sequel, the first Transformers, which was released two years ago, ranks right up there with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Read more

Tom Keogh, Seattle Times: Fallen would do well to turn itself into a bland, eighteen-wheeler and drive out of town. Read more

Ruth Hessey, MovieTime, ABC Radio National: I saw Revenge of the Fallen at Imax, which is probably why I managed to stay awake in what for me was the world's most boring movie. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: Everyone is overcaffeinated, everyone screams their lines, perhaps so they can hear each other over the explosions and the thunderous score. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: For far too long, the movie consists of chase scenes, scrotum jokes, shrieked conversations, broad slapstick, and depressingly regressive ethnic caricatures. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: There are enormous battle sequences -- you can practically see the dollar signs -- but little effort at telling a story. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: So what if he can't put a coherent series of shots together? Bay's going for pure sensation, and everyone knows dramatic continuity is for women and the weak. Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: The special effects are better and the dialogue slightly more humorous than in the first movie, but the anti-Arab subtext is repugnant. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The first, comparatively lucid Transformers was a headache, but I sort of enjoyed it....Revenge of the Fallen is more like listening to rocks in a clothes dryer for 2 1/2 hours. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: A well-oiled, loudly revving summer action vehicle that does all that's required, and then some. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: I would like to think that even if I was 14, either in body or spirit, I would still find this film an impossibly, incomprehensibly overlong and cacophonous bore. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: The right notes are struck over and over for the target demo but there's not much for the rest of us. The special effects are no longer quite so special. A fact that doesn't stop Bay from committing more-is-less excesses. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: A great grinding garbage disposal of a movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen isn't so much a narrative film as a cacophonous series of explosions intermittently interrupted by needless dialogue. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Revenge of the Fallen may be a massive overdose of popcorn greased with motor oil. But it knows how to feed your inner 10-year-old's appetite for destruction. Read more

Laremy Legel, Film.com: It adds up exactly as you'd think if you've seen a moving picture before; the motivations are simple while the laughs pound you about the head and face. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: At least the special effects in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen are remarkable: You never tire of the endless variations of robots Bay and his computer-generated effects crew come up with. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: The magic isn't in the plot (no disrespect to returning screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, joined by Ehren Kruger), but in the obvious delight Bay takes in boyish fantasies of battles, cars, aliens and babes. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: The movie rages on for a hundred and fifty minutes and then just stops, pausing for the next sequel. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It's all pretty numbing. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: While LaBeouf proves, finally, to be a viable leading man, and Fox and her midriff earn the power-rock ballads that play every time they have a close-up, they ought to move aside sometimes. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen dazzles the eye, numbs the mind and may cause deafness in some cases. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Transformers 2 is bigger, longer and louder than its predecessor. In this case, more is less. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Call me old fashioned, but I like a little side story and character to go along with my order of big, loud special effects. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Transformers: The Revenge of The Fallen is beyond bad, it carves out its own category of godawfulness. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Bay seems to think that just showing us a bunch of brightly clashing metallic limbs (accompanied by lots of noise) is enough to make us faint in our seats with excitement. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: The simplest thing Bay could have done to clarify the stakes of the robot wars would be to visually distinguish the robots from one another in some way. Armbands? Shirts and skins? "Hello, My Name Is" stickers? Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: I've just spent 2 1/2 hours watching a movie and another hour thinking about what I saw and I have no earthly idea what Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is about. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The spectacular Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a triumph of the producers' creed: Pound the senses, simulate emotion and milk the golden calf of the familiar like a mechanical farmhand. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Because Bay bombards you with so much, it's easy to forget that he can be a gifted technician. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The comedy is what keeps Transformers 2 from turning into one colossal pileup of the monster trucks. Read more

Tom Huddlestone, Time Out: While it would be hard to make a case for 'Revenge of the Fallen' as 'good' in any normal sense of the word, it possesses such brute force that the viewer is left with two options: surrender, or suffer in silence. Read more

Christopher Orr, The New Republic: If it sounds as though the script (credited to Ehren Kruger, Robert Orci, and Alex Kurtzman) was written in serial-novel form during an all-night mescaline bender, well, I have no evidence that it was not. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is proof positive that not every summer action blockbuster has the mettle to be a franchise. Read more

Jordan Mintzer, Variety: With machines that are impressively more lifelike, and characters that are more and more like machines, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen takes the franchise to a vastly superior level of artificial intelligence. Read more

Robert Wilonsky, Village Voice: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a bewildering, noisy, sloppy, cynical piece of work, a movie that sneers at the audience for 147 minutes and expects us to lap it up as entertainment -- and be grateful. Read more

John Anderson, Washington Post: What's wrong here is that there's so much swirling, relentless action, indistinct robot characterizations and over-caffeinated techies loose on the special-effects machines that the movie, in mere seconds, achieves incoherence. Read more