Went to see this last night in an American cinema (have never watched a film with an American audience, they certainly make their feelings clear - clapping the best bits, the start of the film, even melting at Megan Fox's introduction).
As a fan of the cartoon, a big fan of the cartoon movie and of the first live action film I have to say Transformers 2 was fairly disappointing.
The first film seems simplistic to this one in terms of storyline, pacing and spectacle, however this is what made it a good film. Transformers 2 somehow seems unfinished (even though it's very long) almost like Michael Bay shot a lot of footage but it just didn't do well in the editing stages.
The two twins were annoying and definately seemed offensive for the race they were portraying, which is quite clearly African Americans.
I never knew how to feel because everytime a series scene would take place it would be interupted by a lame joke which would produce a snigger at best. The first film did this too but I forgave it because it didn't happen as frequently. This is Hollywood's problem of trying to draw in a large age group and failing to have an overall mood - the twins are perhaps for children but also swear.
Shots of Megan Fox are
sexualised and although as a 22 year old male I found this the best part it couldn't make up for the rest of the film. Clearly producers and script-writers have taken into account the response Megan Fox got from the first film, including her win as sexiest female 2008 and writen her role according to that.
It's a shame because this film had the potential to be good, even great but even the scenes of spectacle failed to make up for the messy, long and very thin storyline which tries to hard to please everyone.