'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen' erupts with chaos and wreckage

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.

Director Michael Bay ("Armageddon," "Pearl Harbor," "Transformers") is the modern master of mayhem, and he knows what his audience wants.

They want to see sexy Megan Fox posing in skimpy outfits while wearing a perpetual slight sheen of sweat, her bright red lipstick always perfectly inviting; they want to watch Shia LaBeouf run about screaming non-stop as if trapped in a pinball machine from Hades; and they want to watch stuff blown up real good while giant robots beat the crap out of one another.

Bay completely delivers on all three counts, and in many ways this is the most consciously successful film of the year. Heaven help us all.

Of course, it's also hugely terrible. You don't watch this movie; it attacks you, pummels you really. The success of "Revenge of the Fallen" may say much about why modern audiences go to the movies. Not so much for a story or characters but for a new brand of sensory self-flagellation.

Not that Bay is in any way apologetic for his work, and not that he should be. If this is what people want, why not give it to them?

He sets the tone for the film right from the start as a team of American soldiers and good alien robots does battle with a giant bad robot from outer space in Shanghai (wouldn't it be cool to see "Based on a true story" at the beginning of this movie?). Buildings are destroyed, freeway overpasses crumble. Most of the time it's hard to tell the good robots from the bad, and chaos and destruction rule.

That's entertainment. And it's just the warm-up.

Then we're off to gaze at Fox's lips and loins. The contrast between Bay's mondo-metallic punch-out sequences and his lingering shots of Fox's superbly tanned and toned flesh may have much to say about the dichotomy of modern technology and mortal beauty. Or he may just like shooting pictures of hot chicks. Bets are on the latter.

Returning from the first film, Fox plays Mikaela, now girlfriend to Sam (LaBeouf), who is leaving for college. Just before hopping in the car, though, Sam discovers a shard of metal from the cosmic cube that was at the center of the last movie, which predictably sets off a battle between the good robots and bad robots again.

Except this time, there's some outer-space-dwelling, "Alien"-looking bad robot called the Fallen who's the man, er, machine to beat. This and far too much else are all explained in preposterously sudden expository outbursts along the way. It's hard to believe Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the guys who wrote the recent "Star Trek," also do the clumsy "Transformer" films.

That said, it must be admitted that "Fallen" is -- well, to call it better than the original would be inappropriate. It's "more" than the first "Transformers" movie. More explosions, more robots, more Fox shots, more ear-bleeding moments. Less dialogue, character development.

There is plenty of humor, though. Bay offers not one but two shots of small dogs humping one another. Then he comes back later with a shot of a small robot humping Fox's leg. What a wit.

If humping shots are your idea of humor, if constant explosions are your idea of entertainment, if giant robot battles get you high, "Revenge of the Fallen" is your movie. Somewhere the gods are weeping.

tlong@detnews.com">tlong@detnews.com, (313) 222-8879 Read Tom's blog at detnews.com/ /tomlongblog and more reviews at detnews.com/movies.