Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a bigger, louder, more furiously edited and animated, and far less fun second entry in the giant robot franchise. This time it's personal, or at least as personal as an army of malevolent robots determined to destroy the Earth can get, and Sam (a buffed-up Shia LaBeouf) and his super-hot girlfriend (Megan Fox) are mankind's last hope. Michael Bay plays half the film for goofball humor and half for melodramatic excess, but for all the complicated exposition between the heavy metal smack-downs there's not much of a story here (or one that makes any sense) and even less character. That leaves a lot of vague noise and action distraction, an Erector Set Apocalypse that attempts to dazzle audiences but merely pummels them into submission. At 150 minutes, that's a long assault on the senses without so much as a story, a surprise or a convincing emotional response to show for it.

Both the DVD and the Blu-ray releases are two-disc special editions crammed with supplements. There's commentary by director Bay and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman -- I know, I know, I had the same thought: Somebody actually wrote this? -- and "The Human Factor: Exacting Revenge of the Fallen" is a seven-part, 134-minute documentary that follows the film from pre-production to release. It's thorough and gives a real sense of the scale and scope of the production itself, but it's also a real self-congratulatory piece, with Bay strutting through interviews like a drill sergeant as auteur and a bombastic score that seems designed to elevate the making of the film to a cinematic event. There's also deleted/alternate scenes, a deconstruction of key visual effects, interactive galleries on the robots and more. Exclusive to Blu-ray is the interactive "The Allspark Experiment" (for creating custom robots) and bonus featurettes and interactive galleries.