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Now, I’m not a movie critic.  I don’t like movies where it’s just two people in a room talking for one and a half hours about their feelings and/or relationships.  I’m not into period dramas or classic literature.  You won’t find me at classic movie revival festivals.

Those kinds of people who do enjoy the aforementioned will probably not find much to like about Transformers 2.  I, on the other hand, loved it!  It’s pretty much the perfect summer blockbuster.  Let’s see: massive slow-motion explosions?  Check.  Straightforward plot?  Check.  Comedic interludes?  Check.  Improbably hot female co-star?  Double check!  Possible spoilers follow…

Michael Bay continues his ’splodey streak from such movies as The Rock, Bad Boys and The Island.  The action is bigger than the first movie, and as with all sequels, the film makers skipped right to the story, having taken care of the setup in their previous outing.

The film picks up two years after the end of the first Transformers film.  Optimus Prime and the Autobots are co-operating with the American military to root out the remaining Decepticons on Earth, Sam Witwicky is headed off to college while his girlfriend Mikaela stays behind, and Starscream has returned to Cybertron to grow more Decepticons to fight the Autobots.

Apparently, more Transformers can’t be created because of a lack of energon, the substance that made up the Allspark from the first movie.  Entirely coincidentally, it turns out there may be a source of energon left on Earth, and Sam might know where it is, thanks to knowledge transferred into his mind via the previously-mentioned Allspark.  Cue the chase scenes, battle scenes, frantic searching scenes and so on.

Bay’s trademark directing style of frantic cuts, shaky cam and massive explosions is in full effect here.  The robot fighting scenes, with the exception of the first one in Shanghai, are bigger, longer and more well-defined than those of the first film, including a visually engaging sequence in a forest, a juxtaposition of machine and nature that was lacking from the first movie’s dry desert and claustrophobic street fighting.

The story proceeds apace, interspersed with the set action pieces.  While the movie clocks in at 2½ hours, the only time I looked at my watch was to see if I could make it to the end without having to go to the bathroom.  There’s enough comedy and exposition between the action sequences to keep the movie going and it never feels like it’s bogged down.

All of the Transformers from the first movie make an appearance (the exception being Jazz, who was killed in the finale of the previous film) alongside a number of new robots on both sides.  Some of the newcomers mesh quite well with the previously established characters, but some feel slightly tacked-on (as do a couple of the human characters).  During the final battle of the film, it was occasionally difficult to tell which machines were on which side, as they didn’t always show the eyes (Autobots have blue eyes, Decepticons have red eyes).  That aside, the expanded cast (both man and machine) works quite well to drive the story forward.

I fully admit to being the target demographic for Bay’s films, and own most of his films. I fully intend to add this one to my collection when it’s available on DVD.  I give it four explosions out of five.