Ah, another dose -- another long, loud, lumbering, lousy dose -- of Bayhem.
Yep, director Michael Bay follows up his 2007 hit Transformers with a more-of-the-same sequel that feels more like a more-is-less remake in which the machines once again upstage the human performers.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a fireworks display of admittedly technically adroit special effects and no dramatic interest whatsoever.
There are few things on a movie screen as bereft of emotional heft as metallic robots fighting one another, and yet that is the main attraction here.
It should come as no surprise to anybody that this shiny plaything under the summertime Christmas tree is a property that started out as a 1980s cartoon and a line of toys.
Not that it matters, but what about the plot? (Such as it is.) Two years later, the goodie Autobots are still on earth, allied with the United States military to prevent any further attacks by the baddie Decepticons.
Shia LeBeouf's Sam, who last time we looked discovered the alien robot race, is now in college. So are his car-mechanic girlfriend (Megan Fox, whom Bay ogles with the camera as she does what is essentially a glamorous photo shoot) and his parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White), who are on vacation in Europe.
This time it's a hunt for a buried machine that's capable of destroying the sun and thus all human life because the Decepticons have returned to Earth on a mission to (...yawn...) make another attempt (...yawn...) at world domination while the Autobots (...YAWN...) try to stop them (...zzzzz).
And with -- as the subtitle informs us -- something called "The Fallen" seeking its revenge, Sam holds the key to all this.
John Turturro as a former agent, Rainn Wilson as a college professor, and Tyrese Gibson and Josh Dohumel as US Army soldiers pursuing the Decepticons are also involved, but all these flesh-and-blood actors play second and third fiddles to the transforming CGI hardware, which remains monumentally uninteresting to watch after its first five seconds.
As usual, Bay -- for whom nothing exceeds like excess -- offers a parade of hardware-happy, camera-jittery, edited-into-cole-slaw set pieces that make for a great collective sleeping pill. Unless, that is, watching large pieces of metal do battle with each other floats your boat.
Welcome to a movie that never slows down and yet is the slowest 2½ hours imaginable.
Two and a half hours, Michael? Really? Wow, too much of a good thing is bad enough. The self-importance on display here is staggering.
Calling the screenplay (to use the term loosely) by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman (the latter two wrote the first installment) preposterous gives it more credit than it deserves. It's really just an assault on the senses, a string of indifferent scenes that justify the inclusion of all the emotionally empty robot-on-robot fight scenes.
This is another movie aimed at a robo-carnage-craving fan base that apparently never gets tired of gigantic alien robots morphing into various vehicles. Shakespeare, eat your heart out.
Now here's a scary thought: Bay (Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon, The Island, Pearl Harbor), who as an artist would appear to live only to blow things up, intends this as the middle installment of a trilogy. Yikes.
So we'll transform 1½ stars out of 4 for the hyperactive, bombastic, mindless, bloated, incomprehensible and tedious Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
If you loved the first one, step right up. If not, get ready for Revenge of the Fallen Asleep.
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There are few things on a movie screen as bereft of emotional heft as metallic robots fighting one another, and yet that is the main attraction here. 
