Ouija (2014)

“Hey, guys! Let's make a movie based around a Ouija board! Hasbro would really love that!”

“Uh, I'm not sure that's a good idea at all...”

Then that second guy was dragged out of the board meeting for Satan's Movie Studio, and a gunshot was heard. His body was hung up on a cross in the front lobby to set an example for anyone else with similarly contrarian ideas. Hasbro executives collectively grunted their approval in deep demonic voices like the rumblings of a dragon's bowels. The first guy was promoted to God of the company that same afternoon. Production on the movie Ouija began the next day.

Director: Stiles White

Starring: Olivia Cooke, Douglas Smith

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This was produced by Michael Bay and Brad Fuller, the guys behind a production company called Platinum Dunes. If you don't know who they are, well, they produced a range of movies from merely terrible, like the Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street remakes, to absolute unholy crap like The Purge: Anarchy, The Hitcher remake and The Unborn. Christ, their line-up reads like scrolling through the past history of Cinema Freaks.

Anyway, like all great films, this began production in 2008, six years before it actually came out, and went through a shitload of script changes, director changes and basically everything else, with the promise of a super huge Pirates of the Caribbean style adventure with a huge budget. Yes, a Pirates-level budget for a fucking board game movie.

...I think it's really just time for everyone in Hollywood to go home and spend some time with their families. You know, before their families disown them for stupid shit like making blockbuster films out of board games.

Things seemed to be looking up in 2011 when the film seemed to be dead in the water due to budget issues, but only a few months later, it was unfortunately revived, like some horrible Re-Animator-esque abomination. And now we have to suffer for it. My favorite part is that, apparently, after its botched and horrific revival, they went with a significantly lower budget for the final project, as if to say, "yes, we've come to our senses and realized we can rob audiences of their money and time, for less of a budget."

The movie begins with a blonde girl named Debbie playing with a Ouija board with her friend, Laine. They're both little children at this point, which makes sense, because no one but little children will be scared by the movie.

Then we flash forward years later to when Debbie is a teenager. She never got over that Ouija thing, and she's still playing with it now, because characters in these movies are flatter than concrete outside and have no believable motivations. We see her tossing the board into a fire, which is really rude, because I'm sure her parents paid a lot to buy that piece of shit.

Hmm, that second image doesn't seem right. Let's fix that:

Ahh yes. Much better.

She wanders around for a bit and notices weird things like doors opening and closing slowly by themselves. Usually, when that happens, I call my fucking landlord and tell him the hinges are kind of loose, but I guess here it's supposed to be scary.

Also, the burner is on! Maybe you should pay more attention when you're cooking.

They should just put a pan on the stove and start cooking. Take the chance! Ghosts be damned.

Burning that Ouija board was apparently not the right move, though, as then Debbie gets hanged by a bunch of Christmas lights.

75% of people hang themselves if their parents bought them Hasbro toys as kids.

Based on the sad music and the people in black carrying flowers up to a house, I'm guessing we're supposed to be feeling sad or something.

Maybe...

It's good they put those cliches in the movie, because otherwise I wouldn't feel anything for Debbie. We knew nothing about her – she was basically just put in to be a standard open kill. They spend so much time dwelling on how sad everyone is, though, so I guess I'm just emotionally dead from watching so many of these terrible scenes over and over.

Laine is now also grown up, and she spends her time hanging out in comically anachronistic looking diners with her boyfriend, who seems to think John Hughes movie fashion is still cool. Because I guess Bay and his cohorts all have zero idea what anything in real life is like now. They probably haven't even seen the outside of their board room in years.

Like, totally hip, man. Breakfast Club.

After Debbie's death, Laine spins totally off the rails and demands that all of her friends accompany her to the creepy abandoned house of the dead girl and play the Ouija board to see if there was anything they could have done to prevent her suicide. Which is totally acceptable and sane. “Hey, could we have done anything to prevent you killing yourself? Yes? Wow, I feel better already!”

Let's get real for a second; knowing whether or not you could have stopped someone from committing suicide wouldn't help you at all. Are you insane? Who writes something like that?

I also love how they all accuse each other of moving the Ouija counter thing around just to prank one another. Like that's something these people believe their friends would apparently do a day after their friend committed suicide. Maybe in that case, you guys all need to stop hanging out, because you're all horrible people. Frankly, I think they should have asked the Ouija board if they'd still have careers after this movie. The answer would have, no doubt, disappointed them.

For some reason, they all get up and walk around the house afterward, because despite the fact that all of them have repeatedly stated they don't believe the game works, they're now superstitious. You guys really have the fortitude of a marshmallow left out in the sun, you know.

But they do all end up leaving, and go home, you know, like you do after your friend forces you to play with a Ouija board to work through her insane grief. I love how in one of the next scenes, Laine apologizes to one of the others and says she won't do it again. Yeah, you know, just a normal way of coping – playing with Ouija boards to try and defy the laws of death. You know, time heals all wounds!

All is not well, though, when everyone starts seeing this mysterious phrase “Hi Friend” all over the place. One time it's creepily in a car in the cold...

In this one, a human hand slams on the inside of the window afterward as if someone was inside the car. The girl doesn't question this at all, gets inside the car, and then nothing else happens. I guess the movie was just drunk and forgot to make that scare mean anything.

There's one time where it's written on the wall of a creepy tunnel – though I think that time was just a poor homeless guy being crazy.

The money used to make the movie could have been put to helping the homeless. But instead, the movie was made. Was it worth it?

Another time, it's written on a word processor on a computer screen:

What is wrong with you, movie? Are those things really equivalent? No better way you could've conveyed the horror of the situation? It's really just so evident nobody making this really cared.

If you can believe it, they actually go back and try the Ouija board again after seeing these things, because their sense of consequence and action is so fucked up that even jailed convicts would wonder what they were thinking. This time, the ghost just up and reveals itself to NOT be Debbie, but instead a mysterious evil entity called “DZ.” I just don't get why the ghost revealed itself that fast. Surely a better plan would have been to keep pretending to be their dead friend and lull them into a false sense of security. I'm not even a malignant entity of hell (despite what some people would tell you) and even I can see how this could have been better.

So I guess this one girl dies when she sees the Ouija board ghost in the mirror, and the ghost slams her head against the bathroom sink. It's good to know that, if you die from having your head brutally bashed against hard ceramic, your makeup won't run and all you'll get is a tiny gash on your upper forehead. How cosmetically convenient.

Yup, looks like her face was smashed against a sink...

There's also this other woman, a Spanish housekeeper for Laine's family, who of course knows everything about Ouija boards and has no other character besides that. Wow. You know, they used to cut peoples' hands off for stealing things. Can we reinstate that now, except for people who write hack work racist trash like this that doesn't help anyone? No? Damn. Why does this keep happening when I try to propose new rules?!

After that, if you can believe it, we get a long and drawn out scene where Laine and Pete, who was Debbie's boyfriend, actually sit around and search for clues about who the ghost is that's haunting them. All they have is that name, DZ, but through the convenience of lazy script writing, they find out what they need to know. Apparently, some little girl went missing years ago, and her mother was thought to have killed her, and blah, blah, blah. Whatever!

"My brain is a pile of oatmeal-y mush because of the script, but we found what we needed! Hooray! Durrr...."

This leads Laine to go find the sister of the girl who went missing. The sister is apparently now in a mental hospital because she killed her mother years ago for apparently killing the other sister. If you're confused reading that, don't be; no one cared when writing it. Just go with it.

This character is played by Lin Shaye, who was obviously also in all the Insidious movies. Goddamn, did you just have her blackmailed to keep appearing in all these dumb supernatural movies? Did you just grab her right off the set of Insidious 3 and plop her in a wheelchair for this one? You must at least really be paying her well. Shit.

What kind of awful Satanic magic did you guys use to force her to keep doing all of these films? Jesus. I can't imagine the Kafkaesque nightmare her life must be doing all these pieces of utter garbage year after year. Does she get them confused? Like, she'll be on Insidious 5: The Great Who Cares and then go 'hey, aren't we on Ouija 3: It Still Fucking Sucks?' And then they'll go, no, this is Insidious, and funnel more money into her bank account. And the cycle will continue.

The character here is, somehow, even less substantial than her character from Insidious, as she only exists to spew EVEN MORE soul-sucking exposition – this time about how the only way to stop the killings is to free the little girl ghost from the evil mother ghost. I was bored just writing that sentence, and the movie doesn't seem to care either. It's a carnival of not caring up in this shit. But hey, Hasbro got your money, so I guess they won out in a way.

So we get a very silly scene where they find this dead body under Debbie's old house, and then cut off these stitches on her mouth. I guess for some reason that's what breaks the spell – it's kind of like something out of a really cheap haunted house.

This scene would only be cool if Indiana Jones was in the background stealing a gold chalice or some shit.

After that, it seems like it's all over, but whoops, apparently not! Because the movie doesn't seem to get that we want it to go away and stop annoying us, apparently Lin Shaye's crazy old lady character was lying, and it was the little girl ghost who was evil the whole time, and NOT the mother ghost! Wow. Maybe you shouldn't listen to a murderer who lives in an insane asylum, huh? Maybe that would have been better.

Oh, and then she goes full on cartoon villain and starts cackling insanely about how her evil ghost sister will come save her. She gets dragged off by security, presumably to never be allowed to interact with the outside world again. Man, I really don't think THAT was a good plan...but whatever.

"THANK YOU FOR GETTING ME OUT OF THE MOVIE!"

So the boyfriend gets killed off unceremoniously in a pool, which is a callback to a scene earlier where he played with the pool tarp. That's really clever if the only other movie or TV you've ever seen is Blue's Clues. They also have the gall to insult our intelligence by having him show up with his back to them, as if there's any possibility he's not going to be dead and it's not going to be a stupid jump scare.

Please.

Then right when Laine is about to die, the ghost of Debbie appears very conveniently and stops things right as the movie is reaching its climax – I mean, she could have stepped in earlier, but where would the fun have been in that?

"I had to wait until now, the most dramatically convenient time, because otherwise the movie wouldn't have been good!"
"The movie already isn't good!"
"What? NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
*Fiery cataclysm of death*

So that's Ouija – what can I say, it wasn't good. The bar was set super low already – it's a corporate product put out to make money for Hasbro. The characters, writing, plot, scary moments, atmosphere and everything else are all terrible. The script is stereotypical and shallow, with zero real meaning to anything that happens. Characters act in ridiculous ways for no reason and the story isn't about anything except “this toy is cool!” Like the 2011 The Thing prequel, it really shows how much active disdain there is for horror in Hollywood – this is a joke to them, and they do not think it's worth their time to put any effort into.

Don't spend your money on this crap. Download it illegally, and then write scathing reviews online. I don't know if that will make a difference, but it's worth it if you really need to vent your annoyance with how bad this movie is, and how bad everything else the people who made it were involved with is. And hey, it's a better pastime then playing with a fucking Ouija board from Hasbro.

Images copyright of their original owners; we own none of them.

REVIEW: Final Destination 2 (2003)

Ah, Final Destination, the horror movie series catering specifically to clumsy people with no coordination, horrible luck and an inexplicable case of psychic premonitions…this is the half-assed, brainless sequel, brought to you by the genius mind behind Homeward Bound II, so let’s jump on in!

Director: David R. Ellis

Starring: A.J. Cook, Michael Landes

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309593/

The movie begins with news footage recapping the first movie, because you know, missing that one really cripples your understanding of this one. We get some banter about how Death finds us all while the opening credit sequence rapes our eyes with ridiculous imagery that has nothing to do with the plot. This is something like the leftover remains of a bad Goosebumps episode – just silly.

Then we get our main character Kimberly, who is going on a journey to get away from her father, who I like to call ‘Essence of Kevin Costner.’ They’re going on a rockin’ road trip to Daytona, FL where they plan to get high and stuff, I guess, which is pretty much all they talk about in the car. The next ten or fifteen minutes of the movie is pretty much just this bunch of dillweeds blathering on about stupid nonsense and not really making a good case for their continued existence on Earth. So luckily…this happens!

Yes, we get the motherlode of all highway car pile-ups caused by a guy spilling beer on himself and a truck full of logs spilling them out the back and causing pretty much every damn car on the road to explode like a bad Michael Bay film.

I get the idea the movie’s entire budget was used on this one scene – was it worth it, guys? Was it worth it?

Well, I’d say no, personally, as we then see that it was all a premonition in Kimberly’s head, just like in the last movie. They make a big point of tying this into the last film, too, like I mentioned before – every radio spot and TV snippet we see is advertising this one-year anniversary of the plane crash from the first movie. Call it ‘convenience media breakdown.’

Anyway, she stops the pile-up and saves a bunch of lives, but then her friends get killed anyway, shock and awe, and I can’t say anything of worth was lost. I mean they weren’t even attractive. Isn’t that like rule number 1 of horror movies?

So then, just like in the last movie, they don’t question at all Kimberly’s premonition or anything; they just let her go. Because that kind of psychic foresight wouldn’t be at all worth experimenting on or looking into, would it? Not even worth a few minutes of questioning from scientific minds, huh? Well okay. There’s also this one guy who looks like he belongs in a movie more along the lines of Sugar Hill or something. He tells them pretty much what the opening credits already told us – death is after them, ooga booga booga, etc etc etc. Because when your viewers are the kinds of people who probably inhale paint every day, you have to REALLY HAMMER IN THE POINT. NO SUBTLETY ALLOWED.

Kimberly pretty much just mopes around, I guess, and we switch over to this one guy who would have been killed in the pile-up, who happened to win a bunch of money in the lottery before that. Apparently this guy has the luck of the gods, and is so pompous that he can throw spaghetti in a frying pan out the window for no reason!

I'm rich, so I don't need spaghetti anymore! Screw just throwing it in the garbage, I'm gonna THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW! I AM HARDCORE SPAGHETTI-THROWING MAN!

But his luck is about to run out as he gets his hand stuck in the dish disposal (couldn’t you just yank it out of there?) and somehow starts a fire that consumes his whole apartment…he gets out the window and gets to the ground, but slips on the conveniently placed spaghetti that he randomly threw out the window, and is then impaled by a fire escape ladder. Oh how oddly specific…

The revenge of the spaghetti! Karma strikes again!

Then we get some more prophetic fun as Kimberly sees some pigeon-hallucinations in the window and suddenly they’re positive that the next victim will get killed in a way involving pigeons! Here’s a question for you, filmmakers: if these deaths are really a result of ‘death’ trying to ‘set right the path’ or whatever…why does it give certain people these premonitions? It’s never explained! Why bother giving them clues to help THWART your plan? It’s like if a serial killer sent the police the location of his next murder in advance. What’s the purpose?!

But it’s okay, because next we get some of the most hilarious hijinks this movie has to offer us yet! In perhaps the worst dentist office in the world, we see that they let their fish tank leak all over the floor and the dentist gets distracted super easily as pigeons suicide-bomb into the window!

Yeah, I'm so glad this dentist's office is so secure in their electronics and water systems. Truly a place I would trust with the safety of my teeth.

And now there are birds inside! Great. Just great.

Wow. And I thought I had seen some ridiculous things on this blog before…

...I think someone's getting sued over this.

Well, I can safely say, the only way this scene would be sillier is if our main idiots came running up to the people about to be killed screaming “WATCH OUT FOR PIGEONS! THE PIGEONS!” And yeah, that’s pretty much what happens. It’s a bad thing when I can’t tell if the movie is so bad it’s good, or so bad it’s worse. The kid gets crushed by some construction or something and explodes in a cloud of horrible CGI blood sprays. What a worthwhile scene, right?! I especially love how the cop tells Kimberly not to bother the kid’s mom with the fact that she’s next in the cycle because “she’s going through a lot right now” – well, great, just let her maybe DIE too, right? She’s grieving, so just put her life in danger! Why not?

Kimberly goes and gets the ever-stupidly-named Clear Rivers from the first movie out of an insane asylum she voluntarily put herself into, and then they team up with the cop and go to see Tony Todd, also from the first movie! He’s even more ridiculous than last time, as he has his mortuary set up with cheesy fake fog and red glowing lights like something you’d see in a horror movie. He says that he knows Kimberly, probably because he’s actually just a creepy old man who stalks young girls in his free time – but I’ll let the movie keep pretending he’s supposed to be ominous.

Oh Tony Todd, you're such an awesome actor who gets stuck in such consistently lame roles. How desperate for money were you?

So then they all gather in this apartment with this police officer and everyone starts to argue about how much they hate the idea of death coming after them, and blah, blah, blah. Even the one Sugar Hill-ish guy from before, who previously told them the whole story about death coming for them in the first place, now hates the idea and protests that he’ll never let it happen to him – logic? What’s that?

Meanwhile, Nora – the mother of that kid who died at the dentist’s office – decides that she wants to die and is at peace with the idea now. It’s actually a fairly emotional scene. The movie decides to follow it up, though, with a death scene that rips off one from Scream. She gets her hair caught on the prosthetic arm hook of some guy who just happened to be on one of his daily ‘hang out in elevators with a box of prosthetic limbs’ itches…OH. HOW. CONVENIENT.

Oh ho ho, I carried around a box of prosthetic limbs AND sniff a girl's hair today! What a productive afternoon!

Ripping off Scream isn't the way to go, folks.

Following that up is another equally wasted scene in which this other guy tells Kimberly to go find his mom and tell her he’s sorry he disappointed her – again, a very emotional scene ruined by a tasteless and retarded death scene seconds later:

Oh Final Destination 2…you’re such a horrible, worthless excuse for cinema.

So there’s also this other plot involving a pregnant woman that Tony Todd told them could stop death’s plan if she has her baby. Kimberly has a vision of the pregnant woman driving a van into a lake, and so the cop has her pulled over and arrested for "stealing" the car - really just an excuse to keep her safe from the death cycle. The guy at the police station is such a good cop that he holds a gun in her direction while talking to her in her cell!

Best. Cop. EVER!

Her water breaks and they rush her to the hospital. Kimberly has some visions and stuff and then the baby is finally born, only for Kimberly to realize that they had it wrong – the pregnant woman was never supposed to die in the first place, and Kimberly herself was supposed to die driving the van into the water! So like a good little idiot she is, she steals a van and drives it headlong into the water. Wow. Truly, astoundingly retarded! I bet she’d believe anything. You could tell her she was actually the descendant of the Mole People and unless she killed herself, the world would end, and she’d probably go along with that, no questions asked. Truly a spectacle of human stupidity.

So yeah, she ends up surviving somehow, the whole supernatural chain of deaths stops for no reason at all, and everything is okay to the point where they can have dinner with this random family on a farm. Only then their son blows up in a nonsensical explosion and his arm lands on the table!

Okay, I can’t take it anymore; this is crazy! Complete lunacy! The Final Destination series is just crap. I mean I guess you get a few cool scenes like the big car chase at the beginning of this one, but what’s the purpose of any of it?! It’s all the more frustrating because I get the idea the makers of this movie knew they were making half-baked tripe that five year olds could write better. The fact that they did it anyway, with so little shame or discretion, just makes this whole thing all the more despicable! I declare this movie complete ASS. Full stop. Don’t watch it. Just run away; far away!

Review: I Am Number Four (2011) TH

Teens, love and alien numbers

This is a person-with-special-abilities movie involving a teen at the center along the lines of "Smallville," "Jumper," "Harry Potter," "Twilight," "Percy Jackson" and "Push." John (Alex Pettyfer) moves around with his protective guardian and mentor Henri (Timothy Olyphant) to elude these tall, pale, bald things called "Mogadorians." After trouble elsewhere, involving normal people finding out part of who he really is, John and Henri find a home sweet home in Paradise, Ohio: a place where instead of running away it all comes together with real friends who might actually understand him.

John is the fourth of his kind of protectors of Earth, though this hunky, human-look-alike with the exception of glowing hands and calves hails from a planet called "Lorien" along with eight others. Three are tracked, hunted down and killed by the Mogs and John's number is up next, that is unless he can keep his powers to himself and control them. This is reminiscent of the whole Spider-Man motto: "With great power there must also come great responsibility," not to mention discipline and restraint. All things the normal person might pervert, and that's what typically separates heroes from villains: self-sacrifice vs. personal gain. Except the Mogs are a little more extreme as they don't want to colonize Earth, they want to decimate it--you know, those kind of savage villains of the '50s stock who look exaggeratedly hideous and are so one-dimensional that you're forced not to like 'em considering everyone else is normal or pretty.

Where Superman could easily fly into a telephone booth and comb his hair the other way without anyone suspecting a thing, our guy, Number Four, has 21st century technology to dodge his appearance getting out such as video streaming sites and web pages to spread photography of his presence, which is too tempting for him to contain. He's found a quirky friend to stick up for, who coincidentally has a thing with aliens and UFOs. Though he's got more than one enemy on his list, with the newest being the egomaniac school bully who comes in between a newly met, photographer girl to further complicate the challenge of forbidden love a la "Twilight." This is where the pacing turns somewhat light-hearted and melodramatic (think WB broadcasting) to show that people with extraordinary skills deep down inside have desires and deal with problems just the same. Though it creates a slower middle with the whole token, fairyland-in-modern-times love interest subplot and takes away from the fast moving pace it starts and finishes with. The last action sequence is loaded with special effects and involved a high-octane battle involving shootouts with alien weapons and odd looking alien beasts.

"I Am Number Four" squeezes every other convention into it of the last decade. It borrows from established big-budget pictures to create a recognizable formula that feels secure: aka cash-in. While it's a little more pliable and less shameless than others who straight take a formula, it still feels like they're camouflaging this as something you've already seen with different names, faces and only a few things shuffled around. This isn't going to be like "Heroes" where there is at least someone in the cast that you can gravitate towards, as the relatability factor of "I Am Number Four" is aimed towards a certain demographic with hardly any other punches pulled outside of its box. There are all kinds of things to learn and grow from, except it's slated towards an up-and-coming teen who doesn't know where they place themselves in life amongst the pecking order just yet, as it shows by example how these characters made it through in mostly one piece and gives courage to do so yourself. They do it, you don't, no one gets hurt, though it all kind of gets tiring after awhile with everything so smoothly falling into place by fate or coincidence.

Director: D.J. Caruso (Disturbia, Eagle Eye)
Starring: Alex Pettyfer, Timothy Olyphant, Dianna Agron
Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1464540/

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Starring: Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, John Turturro

Director: Michael Bay

IMDb:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1055369/

Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers:_Revenge_of_the_Fallen

Oh God...

I am only human with human flaws, and on occasion, I want to see a train wreck. I was curious about why this movie got blasted as hard as it did. Well...I found out. And it deserves every criticism it got.

For the record, I do not say this as a Michael Bay-hater. I actually liked the first "Transformers" movie; it had epic battles between good robots, bad robots, and the military, and had a lot of humor in between. Sure, it had some stupid parts in it, but generally speaking it was entertaining. This on the other hand...there is no defense for this. I do not usually like doing "summery reviews," but I think that this time it is necessary to explain its true awfulness (I will skim over a bit so that I can get to the "important parts"). There will be spoilers, but trust me, you will not care.

It starts off with Optimus Prime talking about how the Decepticons and their real leader, named the Fallen, came to Earth long ago to get energy and a bunch of other stuff that will be explained later on and does not really need to be mention at the moment. It then shows the Autobots and the military chasing after leftover Decepitcons through the streets of Shanghai. The new national security advisor is an asshole (surprised?) and wants to disband the group and sending the Autobots packing, but Optimus warns that this is unwise that there is going to be big problems ahead, indicating...THE REVENGE OF THE FALLEN!!! Or he could have been talking about the plot, which I think ends up doing more damage to mankind than the Fallen ever does.

It then cuts to Sam (Shia LaBeouf) who is getting ready for college. He is still dating Mikaela, played once again by Megan Fox. Has her acting improved since the first movie? Nope. Is she still hot? Yes. Well, that's all that really matters, so let's just move on. Anyway, Sam finds a piece of the All-Spark that was destroyed in the first film and it fills his mind with a bunch of symbols and releases a bunch of really weird looking robots that briefly cause havoc around the house. How exactly did this last part happen? It's not really explained. Get used to it.

Despite this issue, Sam gets to college and meets his new roommate Leo (Ramon Rodriguez), who talks about how the governments of the world are hiding the existence of the robots. This is when the movie really starts to raise eyebrows. How exactly is the U.S. government and its counterparts expecting to have 50 foot robots running around, firing guns at one another, in huge metropolitan cities like Shanghai AND BELIEVE THAT NO ONE WILL NOTICE! This was mentioned at the end of the first Transformers movie, but I did not think anyone really took it seriously. Well, apparently Michael Bay and other people who made the film did! Jesus.... So, how are we expected to ignore this huge plot hole. By laughing at Sam's mom (Julie White), who accidently eats "special brownies" and gets really loopy! Are we also expected to buy this fact even though she apparently bought it from stereotypical looking stoners and that a woman in her late 40s does not know what a marijuana leaf looks like (the symbol is clearly labelled on the bag). I guess there is nothing we can do about these plot holes, is there?

So Sam continues to adjust to life at college, which is filled with hot girls as far as the eye can seen, some of whom walk around only wearing towels, and a number of them have the hots for a strange professor, played by Rainn Wilson. Yeah, because when I think of sexy college professors, I think of Dwight from "The Office". But Sam cannot really focus on this because he is having weird visions and displaying odd behavior as a result of it. He is also being stalked by a psycho chick who is trying to seduce him. Little does he know that another part of the All-Spark was stolen by Decepticons, who use it to revive Megatron and others. Megatron then meets with the Fallen on his base in outer-space, the Nemesis, to discuss plans for global destruction.

It is eventually revealed that the psycho chick is actually a Decepticon that was seeking to eliminate him and steal his All-Spark piece. Wait...what? Hold on, hold on! They are able to make almost perfect replicas of human beings. Since when?! Are they using the Skynet program from the "Terminator" films to help them out? Well, guess what? She gets destroyed shortly afterward and so we never get an exclamation for this new type of technology they posses and it is never mentioned or seen again. Great. It turns out that Sam isn't the only one with problems: Mikaela has to deal with a very annoying Decepticon named Wheelie who sounds like a PG-13 version of Joe Pesci. She eventually "trains" him and turns him into a pet that fits in her purse. Its like Megan Fox is Paris Hilton and Wheelie is her robotic Tinkerbell. That's super! But believe me, it gets worse than this guy.

After being captured by the Decepticons, they are recused by Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. The enemy attacks and while Optimus fights bravely, he is killed in the assault. Bumblebee then escorts Sam and the others to safety, while the other Autobots come in to defend them. Where were they beforehand? Probably could have helped Optimus out a bit, couldn't they? Not that it will do him much good now. The humans go into hiding and are guarded by Bumblebee and twin robots named Mudflap and Skids and oh my god those are the most racist robots I have ever seen! I mean, I am not usually the sort of person that goes after random bits of pop culture and accuses them of being discriminatory, but even I have my limit. The guys speak in Jive, they are depicted as unintelligent, they don't like to read, have no character depth, and...come on, one of them even has a gold tooth:

"But Sam! I don't know nothing about birthing no Autobabies!"

Despite the fact that he is wanted by the government so he can be handed over to the Decepticons as part of a bargain to leave Earth (and so Mudflap and Skids can get handed over to the NAACP), Sam still wants to help save the world and Leo makes his only real contribution to the movie by contacting a guy who he thinks can help them. As it turns out, the guy is Simmons, the government douche-bag from the first movie. He is played once again by John Turturro, because I guess the Coen brothers and Adam Sandler are no longer taking his calls anymore. He helps Sam decipher the codes in his head, and their quest eventually leads them to National Air and Space Museum where they run come across a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird with a Decepticon symbol on it. Not sure how that got by both the Air Force AND the museum's curators!

It turns out to be Jetfire, an ancient robot who has switched sides to the Autobots. I think I hate Jetfire more than anything else in this movie. He is not the most annoying or the most racist character in the film, but he pretty much represents almost everything that makes it so dumb: he yells and screams a lot, he fumbles around on a walking stick (I don't care if he is old; why does A ROBOT need a walking stick?), and when he farts (yes, he farts too) a parachute comes out of his ass...or what is supposed to be his ass. Its kind of embarrassing to watch and it destroys what very little dignity this film already had left. Why...just...why?

Anyway, Jetfire transports them to Egypt, tells them about how there is a machine there that is to be used to give the Decepticons energy and destroy the Earth and only a Prime can stop the Fallen. They devise a really elaborate plan to find a magical object called the Matrix-

Sorry Keanu, Megan Fox is already in this film, but the next time we want a big name star who can't act their way out of a paper bag, we'll give you a call.

-and use it to revive Optimus Prime. They eventually find the Matrix, but it crumples to dust upon touching it. Sam still insists on using it to revive Optimus. Eventually there is a big battle between the Autobots, the Decepticons and the military like in the first film, except the Autobots are rarely shown. Seriously, why were they even in this movie? Oh, I forgot, there is also a part where Simmons find out that one of the Decepticons has a scrotum. That is not as disgusting as it sounds, but it would be best if we not look to much into this.

Well,Sam's annoying parents (White and Kevin Dunn) are transported to Egypt and used as leverage against him, but they are freed after at most five minutes, making this plot point completely pointless. At another point, Sam is seemingly killed by a blast. Wow, the main human character in the second installment of a multi-million dollar movie franchise might be dead; there is no way he is going to come back to life! Well, as you can imagine, it doesn't quite work out that way. He has an out of body experience in which the deceased Primes congratulate him on his courage. He is revived and the Matrix is reconstructed. Umm...quick question. What would have happened if Sam did not get hit by the blast, could not reconstruct the Matrix, and was unable to revive Optimus? Wouldn't the Decepticons have won and the Earth would be destroyed? I mean, for the sake of ending this movie series, that would have been great, but from a storytelling perspective, that seems to be a bit of a flaw in the Prime's design plan, isn't it? Oh forget it, the movie is almost over anyway.

Okay, let's wrap this up. Optimus is back, but is not at full power. Jetfire, realizing that the only thing he has done in his life is hog screen time for a sequel that never should have been made, sacrifices himself so that Optimus can meet the challenge. The Prime then kills the Fallen, leaving Megatron and Starscream to retreat to the Nemesis to prepare for an even crappy sequel for the summer of 2011. Don't you love a two and a half hour movie that ends with a cliffhanger even though the movie you just finished watching wasn't worth sitting through? Optimus gives a stupid speech about unity and all that crap, and the movie finally, FINALLY, ends, with scenes showing Sam returning to college during the closing credits, which serve no purpose what so ever. REALLY LIKE TO END THE WAY YOU STARTED, DON'T YOU, MOVIE?!

This...was...terrible. I expected this film to be bad when I saw it, but I was not prepared for just how bad. I've seen stupid movies before, but with this film, I really thought my intelligence was being purposely insulted. And as far as sequels to recent blockbusters go, this was by far the worst that I have seen. This was worse than the third "Spiderman" movie. This was worse than the last two "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies. This was even worse than the "Matrix" sequels. It was way too long, it had so much stuff that did not make sense, it was filled with uninteresting, annoying, pointless, and/or racists characters, and above all, it just really came off as a film that set out to prove that people will see anything with big robots, sexy women, and mindless special effects. Sadly, they were proven right, as this film made more money at the box office than any other film in 2009 except for the all-time box office champion, "Avatar," despite the fact that it won the Razzie Award for Worst Picture (among other dubious honors). Now, to be completely fair, Shia LaBeouf and even Michael Bay himself have both gone on the record to say that the film was not one that they were particularly proud of. Either way, it was released as it was, and those involved will have to suffer the consequences of their actions. If the upcoming third "Transformers" ends up being a flop, they will know why.

And that is it. I strongly DO NOT recommend this film. Unless are an idiot like me and you want to see a train wreck, that is. A really, really, big train wreck.