Santikos Cine-opsis

I just finished watching “The Horse Boy”, a touching and very real documentary about an amazing family and the lengths they went to help their young child overcome some of the behavioral difficulties associated with autism.

And by lengths, I mean riding horseback over Mongolian countryside to perform a game of psychic-twister with some ancient reindeer-herding shaman.

I know!  Cool!  I had no idea I’d be this enthralled by a movie called “The Horse Boy”, but here I am at 1:35am still excited about how a very hard to reach child was helped by shamanic rituals to live a more normal life.

At the risk of getting too personal (even for a blog), there are autism related cases in my family history, and the respect and honesty in which parents Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff discuss and attempt to treat their son Rowan’s autistic fits is gripping and emotional, without being melodramaic or exploitative.  And both parents are quick to caution that they are not suggesting that all parents of autistic children hop on a horse and roll up on some reindeer farmers in the Mongolian highlands.  But what the film shows us is that parents of all children can accomplish astounding positive changes in their children by being observent to the desires of those children.

The movie is touching without melodrama.  It has a message, but doesn’t preach it.  And even though I have persnoal experience with autism in my family, watching “The Horse Boy” even gave me a higher understanding of the disease; not from a textbook perspective, but from a family behavioural viewpoint.  The family’s trip to Mongolia is a metaphor for tenacity and compassion….and, more selfishly, to figure out how to get their kid to use the bathroom and quit screaming inconsolably for hours at a time.

“The Horse Boy” is just now beginning to pop up in local theaters, and thankfully for S.A., we’re one of them.  In fact, writer and producer Rupert Isaacson will be in town TODAY at the Santikos Bijou theater for a special screening of the film, followed by a Q&A session.

This is a serious request from me to you, the quiet readers and spam solicitors who read this blog.  GO TO THE SCREENING!  You will have a better understanding of the world of autism, and possibly your own world, for having seen this movie.

Now, all plugs aside, I promise that I’ll be back to normal, shredding some stupid movie with wooden acting and a crappy plot by next week (I plan on seeing “Jennifer’s Body”).  But until then, you’re getting shmaltzy JT.  And schmaltzy JT tells you to get your butts down to the Bijou by 6pm Sunday so you can talk to an amazing family and watcah a documentary that will leave you wanting to find a palamino, a sherpa, and a teepee camp full of reindeer shaman.

What: Uber-special screening of “The Horse Boy” followed by Q&A with the dad from the film

Where: Bijou Theater, Crossroads Mall

When:  6pm book signing, 7pm movie, 8:30pm Q&A

Why:  Because you can rent “Love Happens”, and “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” will still be there next weekend.

So DO IT!  Then give me some feedback and tell me what you think.

“A stitch in time saves 9.” — some wordy seamstress

There are contradictions aplenty in “9″, the new post-apocalyptic CGI PG-13 children’s parable directed by Shane Acker and endorsed by Tim Burton and “Wanted” director Timur Bekmambetov.   “9′ is a computer animation film denouncing technology.  It’s heroes are machines…but the villains are machines, too.   Questioning authority is good, but science without soul leads to destruction.  These contradictions are the interwoven cloth that encapsulates 9, a puppet brought to life to save a world destroyed by a monster robot who brings other monster robots to life, which he accidentally brings to life while trying to save the life of another sock puppet who had saved his life previously.  It is then up to 9 to (make sense of and) fix his mistakes, and in so doing, fix the collective mistakes of all mankind.  That’s a lot to live up to for a googly-eyed voodoo doll that looks like a gingerbread man inside a potato sack haz-mat suit.

“9″ the movie plays out like a cross between “Wall-e”, “Edward Scissorhands”, and “The Matrix,” but since 3 references aren’t enough, let’s just go ahead and add “The Lord of the Rings”, “Harry Potter”, “Final Fantasy”, “The Seven Samurai”, “Toy Story”, and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (at least visually).  There.  Now we have 9 references for “9″.

And that’s one of the “9″’s problems. I think that the reason the film’s message gets so muddied is because “9″ started out as an Oscar-nominated short film, and was then expanded to feature length.  Now, I know that this is how many independent movies are made…first as shorts, then stretched into a full length later on to become more marketable.  Only in this case, much of the movie feels like filler…some sort of patchwork plot to link the action scenes together.

That being said, much of the original’s creativity makes it onto the big screen.  There are cute moments and endearing characters, cleverly created villains and wild action sequences.   The crazy robot snake-spider fight scene is one of my favorites, but nothing compares to watching one of the sock-robots sit on an empty tin can and giggle when he sticks a magnet up to his head, like some sort of EMP LSD.

It’s those scenes that make “9″ worth seeing, and its contradictions worth forgiving.  I believe that’s because, as we find out in the film, we put ourselves into our creations.  Maybe its fair then that this creation inherits both our good intentions and our hypocrisies.

Rob Zombie’s “Halloween II” picks up exactly where his first stab at the Halloween franchise left off…both in plot and in style.  We see the aftermath of Michael Myers’ killing spree, his sister walking down the middle of a street soaked in blood and holding the gun she used to shoot her brother.  We see Myers’ giant frame loaded into the coroner’s van and taken off to the morgue.  We know, of course, that it will never get there.  We know that Myers will wake up, pound out of the back of the door, and snap off the heads of the necrophiliac morticians and begin another gore-filled tirade across the countryside.

What we don’t know is that the van hits a cow on the road and cow brains get splattered all over the highway.  That was a surprise. Thanks for that, Rob Zombie.  Thanks for the cow brains.  I really needed to see that.   That was necessary for your artistic vision to be complete, I’m sure.

These excessive departures are not prevalent in “Halloween II”, but they are distracting.  However, as a whole, I think that “Halloween II” is every bit as deeply disturbing and frightening as the first.  And, it will be every bit as hated.  Zombie’s first Halloween movie was destroyed by most critics, who felt it was repulsive and nihilistic.  But a few saw the method behind Zombie’s madness and enjoyed the shift of perspective from Michael Myers as immortal slasher to Myers as a wounded child in a goliath’s body.  A goliath who stabs with the force of a jackhammer and is able to hide his 7-foot frame  behind tiny little trees as he sneaks in for his next kill.

And there are plenty of kills.  But Zombie’s murders lack the frivolity of other bloodthirsty filmmakers.  There’s no mirth or satisfaction taken in the killing, nor are the kills very clever or entertaining.  They’re just murders…brutal, angry, senseless murders.  This isn’t “Machine Girl” or “Final Destination”.  It’s not even “House of 1,000 Corpses”, which was scary and funny.  But “Halloween II” is not meant to entertain…it’s meant to freak you out.

And that might explain why most critics hate Zombie’s version of the Halloween franchise.  These are disturbed people who die in horrible ways.  It frightens people in a darker way than most “gotcha” horror movies where scary villains jump out on screen and freak you out.  Zombie says it best in the film, when a horror junkie asks for Dr. Lumis’ autograph.  He says that Michael Myers really terrorizes the souls of his victims.  Zombie’s “Halloween” terrorizes the souls of the audience…and that’s hard for some critics to endorse.  I however, think that the latest “Halloween” movie is just as dark and deeply terrifying as the last, and if you enjoy looking down into the abyss of madness, this is the movie that will take you down that rabbit hole.

But next time, leave out the cow brains, ok Rob?

One of the best parts of reviewing movies five days after they come out is that I get to read all the other critics just like everybody else.  One of the worst parts when you’re the last kid to jump in the pool, it’s hard to find a clean spot.  SO, I decided to run what the other critics have said about Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, “Inglourious Basterds” through a filter, and strain out some of the warm water…so to speak.

I do this because frankly, I don’t agree with many of my colleagues and I think it’s important to separate whose responses make sense and whose don’t so audiences can better make up their minds on whether or not to go see it, and what they think when they do. Not only that, but since Tarantino has made a living taking other people’s movies and recycling them through his own madcap prism, I figured it would only be fitting that I review his film by using other critics’ words.

Who am I to decide who among my fellow critics is right or wrong?  The guy writing this blog, that’s who!

So, here is my take on what some of the folks on rottentomatoes.com had to say about “Inglourious Basterds.”

I agree with Betty Jo Tucker from ReelTalk Movie Reviews that “Christoph Waltz delivers one of the most brilliant portrayals of a villain I’ve seen since Anthony Hopkins transformed himself into Hannibal Lecter.”  I also almost agree with Daily Express scribe Allan Hunter’s glowing review of Waltz’s character, saying “His performance is a credible candidate for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. He is the best thing in this patchy, overlong but ridiculously enjoyable return to form for the bad boy of American cinema.”  I agree with everything in that except the “overlong” bit.  Although “Basterds” is 2 and a half hours plus, the time flies by, and you’re out of the theater before you know it (with the exception of a few scenes where, admittedly, Tarantino indulges).

But then, we weren’t exactly the first to point out the Austrian-born Waltz’s triumphant performance as the menacingly brilliant SS captain known as “The Jew Hunter”.  Waltz doesn’t miss a beat, and has already danced off with the best actor prize from this year’s Cannes Film Festival (and that’s the last dance pun from me, I promise).   So it’s no stretch to say that Oscar gold could be in his future.  Every time Waltz enters the screen, the audience tenses up, and the drama heightens.  I don’t know if I can remember a villain who could reduce heroins to tears by feeding them strudel and creme (trust me, it works in the movie).

So we’ve all agreed that Waltz is fantastic.  But I don’t agree with Arizona Daily Star movie guy Phil Villarreal that “Basterds” is “By far the best World War II film I’ve ever seen”.  It’s not the best WWII film I’ve ever seen, Phil, and I’m sure you’ve seen way more than me.  Cut down on the hyperbole, man.  You’re better than that.  Look, this may be Tarantino’s “Schindler’s List”, but it’s not Spielberg’s “Schidler’s List”.  “Schindler’s List” makes you angry at the Nazis’ cruelty.  “Basterds” makes you laugh at cruelty done to Nazis.  The moral lesson in that should be obvious.  What “Basterds” is,  is “Damn Gud Fun”, which is what Apollo Guide’s Dan Jardin called it.  But where’s your umlaut, Dan??  Slacker!!

I agree with all the other critics who say that its an amazing and fun end to the 2009 summer movie season, and I take to task all the buttkissing critics who say things like “it’s his best movie since ‘Pulp Fiction!’”, or “Finally!  A Tarantino movie that has a deeper meaning!”

NO!  It is not and it does not.  Hell, it’s half the movie that “District 9″ was in twice the running time!! (Seriously, go see “District 9″!) “Inglourious Basterds” is giving gorefans what they want while laughing at them for wanting it.   It’s an audience laughing like hyenas at Brad Pitt and Eli Roth as they perfect the cocky swagger of G.I.s who don’t have to play by any rules but their own.  It’s grinding your teeth in suspense as the daring U.S. spies engage a hardboiled member of the SS in a bizarre German idiot poker drinking game version of 20 questions.  It’s loving the visual spectacle of a theater in flames while machine guns blaze from the opera seats.  It’s marvelling at and hating Christoph Waltz’s Nazi equivolent of Sherlock Holmes.

But it’s not a masterpiece, and neither the critics nor Brad Pitt’s final lines of the film will convince me otherwise.   And as long as they don’t convince you, you’ll have a great time watching “Inglourious Basterds”.

Oh.  AND don’t bring your 10-year old with you, either.  Seriously, lady…what the hell were you thinking?  This is Tarantino, not Transformers.

In the past few weeks, I’ve gotten to see two movies about American armed troops and their exploits around the globe; “The Hurt Locker” and “G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra.”   While both are movies about war and both have plenty of action, I consider the latter  to be a “war movie” and the former to be an “action movie”.  And while the war movie was clearly superior, the action movie is by far the more popular film.  Here’s my question, and I’d appreciate comments on this: Could movies like “The Hurt Locker” ever have the same success as films like “G.I. Joe”?

Now, one way of looking at this is that high-quality movies about war have already been successful.  One could point to films like “Saving Private Ryan” (which both won five oscars and made $216M, the highest grossing film of 1998).  Now, “Ryan” was made by Spielberg and had a star like Tom Hanks.  But even without a big name star, “G.I. Joe” managed to pull down close to $100M in its first two weeks.

Others could say that the director is the key.  “Inglourious Basterds” wouldn’t have nearly the excitement around it if Quentin Tarantino wasn’t behind the wheel.  In fact, if we didn’t know it was by Tarantino, the previews for “Basterds” would look almost silly.  But Tarantino can get away with things like that, and while Kathryn Bigelow may be known by some as the director of “Point Break”, she hardly has the clout to get people in the seats on name recognition alone.   However, how many casual movie-goers know the name “Stephen Sommers” without hearing it attached to “the director of ‘The Mummy’”?  My guess is not many.  So “G.I. Joe” has proven once again that you don’t need a big name actor or director (or even premise) to bring in viewers.

Maybe it’s demand?  The “G.I. Joe” toys have been around almost as long as Barbie, and families know that they can take their kids to a “G.I. Joe” movie and everybody will have fun.  But a movie doesn’t need to be a crowd pleaser to bring in the crowds.  “Sin City” thrived on the nerd crowd and won the box office its opening week, despite being geared towards a relatively niche audience.

Which leaves me with one thing: studio backing.  “Saving Private Ryan” had dreamworks on its side.  Big companies like Paramount and The Weinstein Company promoted the heck out of “G.I. Joe” and “Inglourious Basterds”.  Summit Entertainment chose to take a different approach with “The Hurt Locker,” opening it in select cities in art house theaters.  Now,  Summit is smaller than Paramount, obviously, so maybe they couldn’t take such a risk.  But there is no reward without risk, and I have to believe that people are smart enough to choose to see an interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking film like “The Hurt Locker” if they are properly informed about it beforehand.  But if a big studio backed “The Hurt Locker”, then it would have those things, and it wouldn’t be the little gem of an indie war movie that’s wowing critics and garnering awards acclaim. It would be a big-budget behemoth like “Saving Private Ryan” and I wouldn’t have to sing its praises in my blog to get people to go see it.

I guess it’s just the way of the movie world, that silly movies like “G.I. Joe” can coast by on big explosions and name recognition but smaller films like “The Hurt Locker” have to fight for each viewer.  But it would be nice if films like “Hurt Locker” got some love from viewers BEFORE awards season.

John Hughes will undoubtedly be remembered by most of the entertainment obit writers as “the influential director of ‘The Breakfast Club’ and other ’80s comedies.”  That’s because it’s easy, and because it’s honestly what most people remember him doing.  But it’s also a bit disrespectful to Hughes, who was far more influential as a writer than as a director.

I know I’m being blasphemous to those who grew up in the ’80s and were able to trace Hughes’ directorial career as it happened.  But really, looking back on it, what made those movies great was the writing.  Hughes as a director was able to step out of the way and allow his vision to breathe.  But many of the films he wrote but didn’t direct are still great comedies.  “National Lampoon’s Vacation”, “The Great Outdoors”, “Home Alone”…all really funny and succesful films!

To be clear, I’m not referring to “Edmond Dantes”, the pseudonym that Hughes used to pen such dreck as “Drillbit Taylor” and “Maid In Manhatten”.  Hughes fell off in the ’90s and ’00s, and thats ok.  Everybody has their peak, and his was 83-91.  But what a peak!  Between those years, Hughes wrote 19 screenplays, and directed 8 of them.   And most of them were well received commercially and critically.

Most critics say that Hughes had the ability to create real characters that audiences bond with, making the drama deeper and the laughs louder.  This is true.  But those characters were written, those situations conceived, by John Hughes the writer.  The way Hughes is being remembered strikes at the heart of one of the movie industry’s longest oldests truths…and deepest flaws.  Writers are not as valued as directors, and writer/directors are remembered as directors, not writers, even though a great writer can have a mediocre director make a great movie out of his script, where a great director can’t get get much out of a mediocre piece of work.

Hopefully, a balance will be struck in the coming days, and Hughes the writer will get his due.  But more likely, Hughes will go down in history as a comedy director, and writers who don’t direct their own work will still have to fight for their paychecks.  But even if that happens, John Hughes paved the way for contemporary comedy writers and directors to succeed.  If Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith don’t throw flowers on Hughes’ grave, all is not right with the universe.

Whoops!  My bad!  I saw a movie this week that opened up in over 1200 theaters…and apparently, I was the only one.  “The Collector” grossed just over $3.6 million in its opening weekend, putting it just below “Transformers 2″, which is in its 6th week.

Should I even let you know what I think about it”?  It wasn’t a great movie, and it will obviously be an irrelevent movie by Monday morning, and available in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart by September.  Why?  Was it the lack of any recognizable talent?  Poor marketing?  Or were people just bored by the idea of another scary-trap-laden torture porn?  Probably.

Whatever it was, I know it wasn’t the premise.  The idea of a cash-strapped thief breaking into a home only to find a sadistic murderer ripping peoples’ teeth out is a promising way to start a horror film.  But then, “The Collector” takes a bizarre turn into “Saw”-ville, and I’m still trying to figure out why.    Why did this guy have to rig the whole house with over-the-top torture traps?  He already had his prey locked up in the basement.  He didn’t expect any company.  And these things would take time to set up, but the film makes it clear that the thief scoped the house in the afternoon then returned that same night.  Setting the traps then felt unbelievably artificial and unnecessary, a stylish departure from a concept that, until that point, had been striving for real scares and had potential to deliver.  I might be old-fashioned, but isn’t a knife-wielding maniac in bondage gear binding people to bathtubs scary enough?  And, as long as I’m complaining, I’d like to see the thief with a heart of gold figure out whether he wants the people he’s trying to help to scream or shut up (the four other people who saw the movie this weekend know what I’m talking about).

And just so you don’t misunderstand me, I loved “Zombie Strippers”, so I’m not knocking “The Collector for being unbelievable. I’m knocking it for being inconsistent, and for ruining a believable premise.  Before all the trap-filled ridiculousness, there was a scene in “The Collector” that I really, really liked.  Arkin the thief breaks into the home, and walks up the stairs to the hidden safe with the loot he desires.  Then, the killer walks up the stairs.  Arkin must avoid detection, but while we know he’s hiding from the crazy killer, he doesn’t.  Relying on his wits, he sneaks past the killer and tears down the stairs for the exit…only to find that it’s locked from the inside.  He’s trapped, and he realizes that the person upstairs is not the  yuppie jewelry store broker he assumed he was dodging.  Scary stuff…and believable, as far as horror plotlines go.

Sadly, the writing team known for “Saw 4, 5, and 6″ (that’s a positive?) got bored about 45 minutes in, and decided that they’d throw a bunch of torture scenes in the middle to kill time.  When they did that, they killed their story, and the film’s future.  Audiences were able to avoid the trap this weekend.  Unfortunately, I was not.

There’s a scene in the new Harry Potter movie where one of Harry’s classmates accidentally comes in contact with a magic talisman meant for Dumbledore that drives her insane….and floaty.  You’ve seen it in the previews. It’s the girl in the red coat who goes all screaming Jesus Christ pose 30 feet in the air.  Harry and friends immediately deduce that she was cursed, and blame Drako Malfoy and his crew for the dastardly deed.  When they go to tattle to the Hogwart’s faculty, Alan Rickman (whom I never refer to by character, because…why bother?) accuses Harry of making wild accusations without any proof.  Which is true.  But we are supposed to hate him for it. “Ooh!”, we say.  “That dirty Snape!  He’s just doing this because he promised a sacred oath to help Malfoy!” (I refer to Rickman as Snape here only because it’s we the audience, not me the writer).

This scene is quickly passed over as we go back to more snogging and love-potion brownie-making at Hogwart’s, but I wanted to draw attention to it because I believe it’s the one scene that can best illustrate the moral relativity that often goes unexamined (at least by its creator) in the Potterverse.

Harry’s wild accusation is just the tip of the wand, as it were, and is rightly dismissed (even though it proves out in the end because for all her “cleverness”, JK Rowling doesn’t know a plot twist from a broomstick).  The more difficult assumption is that his cursed classmate had no prior knowledge of the talisman.  In the movie, it’s explained that she didn’t have it, and then went to the loo (brits are so classy) and had it with her when she came out.  Thus, she was cursed, becuase she obviously wouldn’t have knowingly tried to injure Dumbledore.

What an assumption!  Anybody familiar with the Larry Craig scandal knows that all sorts of deals get made inside public restrooms.  Maybe she was bought with promises of more love-brownies and snogging?  Maybe someone slipped something into her Butter Beer? Who knows?  The point is, she couldn’t possibly be evil because she doesn’t go to Slitherin and her name does end in a Malfoy.  This teaches children classism, and to blame others for their mistakes.  If she had just done what smart girls do and taken her friend to the bar bathroom with her, she never would have gotten cursed in the first place!

Even worse, because Harry turned out to be right, kids learn that it’s ok to level baseless accusations against their classmates because they  “just know” that they were doing something bad.  This is the worst kind of snitching, and it won’t be tolerated!  Not in this blog!

And worst of all, because Harry was right, and Drako was behind the plot, kids learn that it’s ok to write tediously long stories that are bereft of any mystery or suspense, as long as they have quirky cultural twists and magic in them to take their readers’ minds away from the blatantly obvious plot.

There are other morally ambiguous moments in the film (Ron dumps a girl while he’s in a coma and doesn’t care, a girl is peddling earwigs that “make your head feel fuzzy” on the train to Hogwart’s, one of the new professors invites his underaged students over for late night “dinner parties”, Ron eats a whole pan of date-rape potion brownies) but the one above was by far the most fun to dissect.  Now, at the risk of being long-winded, (too late!) on to the rest of the review!

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is very much like how my dad described being a pilot: “hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror.”  There are some bloody creepy moments in HBP, and they’re beautifully fleshed out with excellent visuals and quite a bit of danger.  The cave scene towards the end of the film is particularly nasty…and fun!  Unfortunately, by the time that happened, my girlfriend had already written the movie off and walked out to the bar (and she’s watched almost all of “Battlestar Gallactica” with me, so she’s no slouch when it comes to slow-moving plots).  As a whole, it’s still one of the darker, better HP films I’ve seen.  But it’s also one of the ones I wouldn’t want to watch multiple times.

In my TV review, (plug!) I say that HBP is the “Empire Strikes Back” of the Harry Potter franchise…and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has pointed that out.  The darkness of the film and its ending invite such comparisons.  But unlike HBP, I could watch “Empire’ over and over again.  It’s by far my favorite Star Wars film, and the most entertaining for me.  And it’s short by most modern day epic movie standards (124 minutes…HBP is 153!).   And the revelation at the end of “Empire” is one of the most memorable surprises in movie history.  The big reveal at the end of HBP feels like an afterthought.

When the final two films are released, (they split the last book up into TWO movies! WTF!?!) one of the most prolific movie series in cinema history will be complete (we hope?). “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” could have been the lynchpin of that series. It was good, but “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” is still the true Potter prince to me.  (Leave your reviews and your picks for favorite Potterfilm below!)

In honor of “I Love You, Beth Cooper”, I’ve decided to post my top 5 graduation movies that I can think of off the top of my head. I welcome your comments and response lists, as long as the comment isn’t “go to this site and watch this movie for free!”

Seriously. I’m writing for a theater chain, people!

5. American Pie. The first American Pie movie was a nice, warm slice of raunchy fun. The subsequent six movies were so stale and tasteless that National Lampoon wouldn’t sit through them.

4. Star Trek (2009): This is a stretch, but Kirk graduates, so that works….right?

3. Starship Troopers. Don’t look at me like that! They graduate! Shut up! That movie was awesome!

2. Into the Wild. Emil Hirsch’s breakout performance of a young man searching for the meaning of life, and then dying alone in terrible pain in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. It’s a light-hearted romp that’s fun for the whole family!

1. The Graduate. Is there any better way to graduate than a visit from Mrs. Robinson?

Aaaaaand….discuss!

4

(start watching at 2:34 for the best part — go Lion!)

Transformers!

Products in disguise!

Ever since the original TV series and movie, “Transformers” has succeeded at one thing: selling stuff to kids.  The plot of the show was never very important, other than that the Autobots and Decepticons needed to fight each other at least twice per episode.  The writing was corny at best, and the drawing and animation were often slapdash.

But Hasbro sold a transforming-dumptruck-full of action figures.

Fast-forward 20 years, and the generation that grew up brainwashed into buying toy cars now needs to be brainwashed into buying the real ones (right, Chevy?), and also needs to be brainwashed into thinking that Megan Fox is not CGI.

Autobots to the rescue!

None of this is earth-shattering news, of course.  The partnership between Chevy and Hasbro and Dreamworks has been well-documented throughout the news-o-sphere since before the 2007 “Transformers”.   I just want to mention it to remind viewers and critics of why Transformers exists before they head into this sequel expecting “The Empire Strikes Back” (speaking of franchises dedicated to selling toys!)

Ok.  Rant finished.  On to the review!

In many ways, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is vastly superior to Michael Bay’s original re-hashing of the franchise.  The action scenes are done with a much more experienced hand (although at times it’s still hard to tell who’s beating the crap out of whom) and the Autobots and Decepticons are much better (visually) defined than in the first film.  The sound is amazing, and constant.  There’s a scene where a puma-bot decepticon pukes up a thousand little ball-bearing bots down a vent (it makes sense in the movie….sorta) — the clings and clangs of the detritus falling down the shaft and hitting the floor of the compound are fantastic.

Yet despite its technical and action prowess, the second film feels much clunkier than the first.  Granted, there are no 20 minute “watch Shia Lebouf sneak around the house with giant robots in the backyard to keep from waking his parents” scenes, but those have been replaced with even longer, and more pointless, expositionary dialogue.  I don’t need to see Josh Duhamel explain to his squad exactly how they’re going to fan out along the perimeter to stop the oncoming Decepticon invasion.  The movie spends way too much time doing things like that, and not enough explaining how all those little bots are morphing into that big bot.  Likewise, the names and allegiances of the robot aliens get confusing, to the point where I cheered when the big green robot got blown up, only to be told by a friend that it was the Constructibots and not the Devastator (or something to that effect).

The original series had each episode down to a fine science.  Introduce the new toys.  Pit them against each other. Add a bunch of explosions.  Have the autobots win and Starscream and Megatron fly off in defeat.  Profit.  The new films get some of that right.  But they spend way too much time on the humans, and not nearly enough on the giant alien robots who turn themselves into Chevys.

All my negativity aside, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”, is still a darn good reason to go to the theater and buy popcorn.  And isn’t that what “Transformers” is all about?