Release Date – 6/29/2011
Sam Witwicky is now a college graduate, living unemployed with his new girlfriend Carly. He’s very upset that he’s helped save the world twice, got a medal from the President and still can’t land a solid job. Not to mention the Autobots are off doing secret missions for the government so he never sees his giant robot friends anymore. A top secret government mission from the 60s is revealed where the first trip to the Moon is actually done to recover an alien spacecraft. When the Autobots find out this information, they travel to the Moon to recover Sentinel Prime and pillars that can be used as teleportation devices. But Megatron is still lurking around with plans of his own. This movie was WAY too long, clocking in at 154 minutes. And the usual Michael Bay cheesiness is present through most of the beginning. It would have been great as a 100 minute movie with a shorter build up and keeping the huge ending action sequence. But it didn’t work out that way.
Shia LaBeouf returns as Sam. And he’s more annoying than ever. Just screaming and whining through most of the movie. Megan Fox was not asked back to the series, so they wrote her out by having them break up. Somehow he gets an equally supermodel-looking girlfriend in Rosie Huntington-Whitely. I thought she was actually better than Fox acting-wise but maybe because her British accent just made her sound better. Plus she was definitely easy on the eyes. Holy moly. For some reason, this installment packed in sooooo many characters that I can’t mention them all. Frances McDormand and John Malkovich were nice additions in writing. While McDormand was a head central intelligence officer and a major part of the government in the movie, Malkovich was just Sam’s goofy boss and was pointless. John Turturro returns to provide some comedy relief as a self proclaimed expert on the aliens. Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson return but are barely used and pretty pointless. Then we get Patrick Dempsey added as Carly’s boss who is trying to woo her away from Sam. There’s a swerve with him that is kind of silly. Sam’s parents return in limited scenes and are useless. And even Ken Jeong pops up. Like I said, way too many characters.
As for the robots, they’re pretty badass. Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) provided some surprising moments. Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) was amazing in the end. Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving) was not even a real integral part to the story this time. Shockwave really blew my mind in a few scenes. The end action sequence will have you saying Holy Shit on several occasions. In fact, I’ll say it now before I even give my rating, the last hour saved this movie from being Whacked. I was getting really bored with all the talk about the Moon and Shia complaining that he wants to be involved with government missions. And only short action scenes here and there. Then they blow their load at the end. And thank God because that’s the perfect place to blow it. Michael Bay absolutely destroyed Chicago with giant robot battles and I loved ever y minute of that ending. He still just loves cheesiness though. Instead of the racist twins, we get two miniature Autobots just making bad jokes the whole time. Stuff like that will just turn people off. I’d love to see a completely serious Transformers movie even though the show was known for some cheesy moments. So was Batman on TV though. In the end, the running time really hurts the product. I had faith that Michael Bay took all his criticism and fixed the problems. But the some of the same problems were still there. At least you leave with a good taste in your mouth after watching what is probably the best (and longest) action sequence of the summer.
IMDB – 6.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes – 37%
Movie Wiseguys – 6.5/10