Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Director: Michael Bay
Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox
Classification: 14A
Rating: *

Michael Bay’s sequel to his 2007 international mega-hit Transformers is massive, loud and unrelenting. As a film, it’s exhausting to watch, with every square inch of screen filled with over-saturated colour and a soundtrack clanging, scraping and rumbling nonstop.

In its defence, the visual effects appear to be spectacular, but Bay can’t seem to let the camera rest for a second, making the scenes of giant alien robots doing battle confusing and hard to follow. Even in a simple, supposedly touching scene of dialogue between our hero Sam (Shia LaBeouf) and his girlfriend (Megan Fox), Bay’s camera won’t stop circling around them at a distracting pace.

Much like the first film, Revenge of the Fallen suffers from trying to stuff in too much of everything — too many Transformers (especially the similar-looking Decepticons), too many humans with too many subplots, too many attempts at humour — pushing it to an undeserved two-hour-plus running time.

The dialogue in the film breaks down into three categories: Yelling and shouting, summarizing the plot, or broad, sometimes offensive attempts at humour. In a story where the humans basically tag along with giant robots and try not to get killed, apparently everyone gets to be the comic relief.

And the film’s humour — besides all the references to testicles — tends too often to veer off into the patently offensive, embodied more than anywhere else in a pair of Autobots who shuck and jive their way into a gold-toothed, illiterate robot rendition of Amos and Andy. That anyone involved with the production thought it would be OK is remarkable.

What’s most surprising — and disappointing — about this new Transformers is not that it came from Michael Bay, but that it came from the same screenwriters who brought us this summer’s earlier Star Trek. We know what they’re capable of, and that just makes it that much more disappointing.

• For Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen photos, a trailer, screen times and tickets, click here.