A Sampling Of "Transformers" Reviews

The second "Transformers" movie had a monster opening weekend, but I don't think I've ever seen a movie get such terrible reviews. It's not that every review has been negative (only 80% negative according to Rotten Tomatoes), but that the negative reviews have been so completely, overwhelmingly, and hilariously negative.

Roger Ebert's review and the review in Rolling Stone are both worth reading in their entirety. Ebert, possibly the most respected critic today, opens with this:

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

Ebert wasn't satisfied with his own impressions, and wanted to make sure everyone else hated the movie, too:

Aware that this movie opened in England seven hours before Chicago time and the morning papers would be on the streets, after writing the above I looked up the first reviews as a reality check. I was reassured: "Like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan!" (Bradshaw, Guardian); "Sums up everything that is most tedious, crass and despicable about modern Hollywood!" (Tookey, Daily Mail); "A giant, lumbering idiot of a movie!" (Edwards, Daily Mirror).

Over at Rolling Stone, Peter Travers was not much kinder in his "zero stars" review:

Transformers: The Revenge of The Fallen is beyond bad, it carves out its own category of godawfulness.

Reading a few of these makes you want to read some more, so I dug around a little on Rotten Tomatoes. Here are some other review snippets:

Michael Bay, as a filmmaker, is a fucking tool. His latest and most egregious piece of cinematic sadism, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is nearly unwatchable, a 140-minute video game that will insult your intelligence, hurt your eyes, and offend your sense of decency until you worry that your skull might explode while your brain trickles right out of your ears.
-Washington City Paper

A perfectly dreadful sequel that’s the filmic equivalent of a 150-minute waterboarding session.
-Charlotte CL

They've managed to make a movie that is so incredibly bad that it manages to mark career lows for pretty much everybody involved.
-Movie City News

Bay's film sucks with a capital "S" and with the word enveloped in bold italics.
-Tri-City Herald

I have not seen the movie, but I haven't heard good things about it from anybody. Are millions of people buying tickets simply because Megan Fox is hot?