To lend some context to this review, I was a big fan of the first Transformers film. Sure, it was loud and the camera shook too much, but it was a great summer film and a solid take on the idea that alien robots wanted nothing more than to turn into Earth vehicles and fight each other. Peter Cullen came back to voice Optimus Prime, and just when the human characters became intolerable, there was another battle scene. I went into Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with high hopes that this film would offer more of the same, and thinking the critics were merely being snobs when they panned it.

Boy, was I wrong. This is what happens when the first film in a series becomes a monstrous hit, and no one at the studio dares to say no to you.

The movie is over two-and-a-half hours long, and about half of the film could have been cut with no harm to the narrative, such as it is. You see the mother from the first movie eat pot brownies and go completely insane. Why? I have no clue. There is a female Transformer whose job it is to seduce Sam Witwicky, and in one scene she grows a tail. Why? So we can see her underwear. There are new Transformers, but they are introduced only to do nothing for most of the movie, and then die.

For some reason, in this film the Transformers spit... often. They spit on characters. They spit when they're talking. One character spits on two people in a lingering shot that shows how scary it is to have a menacing character spit on you. There are two new Autobots who seem to wrap up every racial stereotype from a nightmarish Larry the Cable Guy routine into horrific vocal and character design, and the movie gives them nearly as much time as Optimus Prime. One has a gold tooth.

The special effects may have been amazing in the first film, but they take a major step backwards here; the robots barely seem to interact with the space they're in, and rarely seem to be lit from the same light sources as the "real" characters. The answer to this seemed to be setting some scenes in completely computer-generated backgrounds and settings. The movie might as well have been animated in many places. A few revelations don't make much sense, either. The Transformers and Decepticons are machines—but they're grown in organic egg sacs?

The story makes very little sense, and introduces so many strands and subplots that by the end it's nearly impossible to care about anything. The humans pepper everyone with machine gun rounds for very little reason, as it never seems to do anything to anyone. The human characters have very little to do, and no reason to be near each other; there isn't a single relationship that is used for dramatic purposes in a believable way. Megan Fox reprises her role so she can stand around and look hot, jiggling in the appropriate ways when she runs endlessly in slow motion. During one scene, her new pet Decepticon humps her leg as she smiles at him. I guess we know where those egg sacs come from now.

We learn that Barack Obama dislikes the Autobots, and becomes something of a bad guy when he uses bureacracy to try to stop them. We learn that while StarScream is Megatron's lackey, Megatron is also the lackey of a character called The Fallen, who glowers menacingly throughout the film, and looks like a Lego Bionicle character gone tragically wrong. The movie is based on a line of toys, so there were plenty of parents who brought their young kids... who proceeded to cry every time one of the characters was brutally murdered. Remember, if you spray coolant and not blood, you get to keep your PG-13 rating!

By the end of the movie you're stuck in an interminable firefight where dozens of Autobots and Decepticons die, and you'll be trying to figure out which is which.

I tend to be a compulsive note-taker when I'm tasked with reviewing something, but nothing about the new Transformers film made me feel the need to get my pen out. I can barely remember anything about the movie hours later, other than it was loud and went on forever. I do have one, lone note: "parachute poop." The movie wants to point out that even machines have bodily functions, and it does so every chance it gets. At one point you see a robot's swinging testicles, and a character remarks on them. The audience laughs.

The editing is a mess, the jokes are low-brow, the racial humor is cringe-worthy, and the film meanders forever until we find out that the lion had courage all along. There is an item that can bring characters back to life, but of course it can't be used when it really counts. The end of the movie sets up the inevitable sequel, which will likely cost $1 billion, be filmed entirely in slow motion, and still not make a lick of sense.