Giant Fighting Robots

We went to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen tonight. It's opening night. Where better to see a summer blockbuster on opening night than in Washington DC? To see it in LA, that's where. But seeing as we're not in LA, DC was a good substitute.

It was pretty fun. The crowd were at least half black and were adequately enthusiastic. There are twin robots in the film are obviously black (even though they're green and red) and every time they said something black like "I'm gonna pop a cap in yo' ass" or "yo' bitch" they all laughed and said "yeyah". I thought they'd be offended by the blatant stereotyping and white filmmakers' appropriation of their "street jive" but they seemed to like it. In fact anything done in the film by a black person was well appreciated. Even when Obama just got a passing mention it was appreciated. I think I should go to the movies with the African American community more often. They're good people to watch with.

The film itself was very cool. It seemed a lot less succinct plot wise than the first film. And it was less well written, the jokes were cheaper, and the characters even more shallow if that's possible and there were plenty of dumb things. But the robots spent a lot more time fighting, fighting with guns, fighting with fists, fighting with red hot robot swords! How can that not be cool? There's a scene in the forest when Optimus Prime takes on three Decepticons at once. It was brilliant.

Plus the film has more awesome helicopters, planes, aircraft carriers and blowing stuff up. It was great fun.

***SPOILER WARNING***

By far the silliest bit was when Sam went to robot heaven and he was sent back to earth to finish the job of saving the world. It was amazingly dumb. I laughed, so did the man next to me. The man next to me was black. We laughed together. I think we bonded through that moment. In my head I said to him "Yo' that's funny my homie" and I'm pretty sure he said back to me in his head "Right on my brother from another motha!" When I'm in DC now I know I have someone to give me a hand if ever I get in trouble from the gangs.

***END OF SPOILER***

So that's my review. Go see it. If you like robots fighting, you'll love this movie. It's totally cool.