Two years have passed since Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and the Autobots saved the human race from the invading Decepticons. Now he's preparing to leave home for college. Despite his extreme heroics, the battle of Mission City has become an urban legend believed only by conspiracy theorists. Sam is still an average teenager with everyday anxieties and excitement about separating from his parents for the first time, and vowing to be faithful to girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox). Sam does his best to navigate college life, until suddenly he's besieged by visions. The Decepticons soon learn what Sam doesn't know; that he alone holds the key to the outcome of the struggle between evil and the ultimate power of good.

I broke one of my cardinal rules before seeing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and that was that I glanced at a few reviews before seeing the movie. I like to go into movies with a fresh point of view and not be swayed by an influx of positive or negative reviews before seeing a movie. Now while I don’t entirely agree with the universal panning this movie seems to be getting I also have a hard time not agreeing with many of the viewpoints. The movie isn’t some horrendously bad film although it can be at times nor is it some great popcorn fare like the first Transformers was although at times the sequel does capture that original magic. The film falls somewhere between neither good nor bad and just very mediocre. When it’s good its really good and when it’s bad its horrendously bad making the movie a complete conundrum.

The worst part of the film has to be how entirely cheesy the film went. The dialogue of almost all the Autobots is akin to the dialogue in Gigli (yes it’s that bad) another heavily panned film. It’s gut wrenching, atrociously incredibly cringe worthy. The three screenwriters attached to this project should be escorted to the Hollywood city limits and told to never return or face a firing squad. The twins had to have the worst dialogue in the film although even Otimus Prime wasn’t safe from horrible lines that made you want to throw popcorn at the screen. There simply is no excuse for this kind of writing because it went away from what made the first one so successful. The first one was a serious sci-fi film the second one is a horribly cheesy sequel.

Memo to Michael Bay please for the love of god pull the camera back so we can see the action. Think of the Lord of the Rings series and the amazing effects shots involved and notice the camera isn’t so zoomed in on the action that all the audience is seeing is blurry images. Seriously in today’s day an age of FX and effects there is no excuse for us an audience to have to endure this terrible way to present action sequences. The movie has gorgeous fight scenes and tons of action and it would be so freaking amazing if they would just let us see what was going on %100 of the time instead of only %50.

I used to be a fan of Shia LeBeouf but I know I am not the only one that just wishes he would fade away. He has the same manic and slightly nerdy but still going to get the girl kind of acting that gets old so very quickly. Megan Fox is only there for eye candy and for teenage boys to ogle at and there really isn’t a single half decent acting job done by any of its main characters. The one thing about the movie they did get right and what many fanboys will likely rave about is the action. The movie is a fantastic action film and when they are not inserting in cheesy dialogue or zooming so much in on the action that you have no idea what is happening the movie can be good not great but good. The problem is they don’t stop with the cheesy approach and they don’t unzoom their cameras and you get a very mediocre film.

Grade: C