TRANSFORMERS is a ferocious experience rather like standing beside a machine gun turret operated by someone who has just consumed a case of Red Bull. Both experiences are memorable chiefly for flailing frenetic action and thunderous din as battle co
ntinues between two robot clans, the chivalrous Autobots led by Optimus Prime and the vicious Decepticons.
Two years ago the first Transformers made no bones about being aimed at a young, undemanding, robot-loving demographic but since the second one is less PG friendly, with stronger language and even more up-the-skirt shots than you'll find at Wimbledon, I think Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen also has the makings of a demanding drinking game.
Take a swig every time a character exclaims "Run!" "Optimus Prime!" "Look out!" or "The All Spark!" and you could be crawling around the floor before Michael Bay has borrowed his first stealth jet from the US military. Take another drink for every time the plot makes sense and you might make it to the final battle around the Pyramids.
Woe betide the viewer, though, who tries to sip every time Megan Fox allows her mouth to drop open as if her nostrils were incapable of supplying enough oxygen on their own. You won't be conscious by the time Megatron is woken from his suspended animation at the bottom of the sea to free his master, The Fallen.
Meanwhile, over in suburbia, Autobot pal Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is trying to live a normal life by going off to college, but this plan is interrupted when he accidentally touches a shard of ancient Transformer material called The All Spark. Suddenly he's seeing hieroglyphics, solving complicated space/time continuum equations in his astronomy class and being hunted by Decepticons as part of their revival.
When he's not being chased, he and his girlfriend Mikaela (Fox) discuss who will use the L word first. Initially, I welcomed these love scenes as a temporary reprieve from the clash of metal and bombastic soundtrack, rather like the relief you feel when a pneumatic drill outside pauses, but their tender moments are so uncompelling that the cinema might as well flash "Now would be a good time to refuel on popcorn and the bathroom" at the bottom of the screen. Transformers is a film with very definite views about the roles of women. Apart from Sam's dithery mum, who is around long enough to eat a hash cookie pointlessly, there are only two other women in this film – the nice girlfriend and a metal-tongued fembot (Isabel Lucas). Both dress as if they are waiting for their lapdancing class to start.
Instead of comedy, we have humping dogs, John Turturro in his pants, and a pair of irritating robots who jive talk, have gold teeth grills and boast that they "ain't much for readin", as if Jar Jar Binks hadn't already dragged back race relations with science fiction by 20 years.
In between robot wars, Bay takes the time for a bit of self homaging – one of the students has a Bad Boys poster on the wall. It's supposed to plant a hint that you should seek out Bay's earlier Bayhem productions on DVD, but instead it simply reminds you that this is a director who never met a rhetorical apocalypse he didn't love. In Bay's mind, what's not to enjoy about warring bots that turn into cars? More specifically and commercially, they turn into soft tops and four-wheel drives and branded pick-up trucks. Or they turn back into 200ft vacuum cleaners. Plus just a shard of The Spark can turn even mundane objects like waffle irons into lethal weapons. How cool is that?
At times Transformers is like Top Gear directed by Leni Riefenstahl, but mostly it's very, very boring. It would be one thing if this film was just mediocre, pointless and violent, but despite all the money being burnt on screen, the main test here is your patience. Transformers II really doesn't merit two and a half hours of giant Meccano sets unpicking each other; this is far too much of a not very good thing.
On general release from Friday 