So... we was watching VCDs 5

I find a story good when I can relate to its characters. To quote Roy Neary in CE3K (1977): this is important.

The story might feature all kinds of monsters and craziness, but if you can't relate to the characters, then you can't relate to the story and all the monsters and craziness in the world won't be able to fix that. The monsters and craziness are after all just the bells and whistles, not the meat and potatoes.

That's why Steven Spielberg suggested that at heart Transformers (2007) should be about a boy and his first car. Everything else – the Autobots, the Decepticons, Agent Simmons – is the icing on the cake. Spielberg's point, as I see it, is: go ahead and take the wacky for a spin, but whatever you do, keep it connected with the ground. All the movies I have enjoyed as a kid and today as an adult have this one thing in common: as wacky as they are, they're all connected with the ground. For example:

1. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980), my all-time favourite movie, is about a hick from the sticks who dares to dream big.

2. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), a fantasy of kids having the adventure of their lives at besting grown-ups at their own game.

3. Back to the Future (1985) asks the question: what if you were to meet your parents as high school students?

4. Ghostbusters (1984). Forget about the ghosts. This movie is about the three main protagonists (who are basically playing themselves) and the chemistry among them.

5. The Goonies (1985). See #2.

Which brings us to Super 8 (2011), the movie I saw on VCD. Super 8 tells about a group of teenage kids from a blue-collar town who are spending their summer vacation making a zombie movie on Super 8mm film. Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) is the make-up guy, Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffiths) directs, Cary (Ryan Lee) does special effects, and a couple of other friends, including Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning), have taken on acting duties.

First thing of all I have to say that that is one hell of a creative way to staying out of trouble. These are decent kids. They're real too: you might recognize a personality or two or you might even be one of them. Then the wacky comes along and the story moves into E.T. territory, but that's cool because director/ writer J.J. Abrams has grounded things beforehand. He made sure of that through the kids' friendship, banter, puppy love, and their relationship with their parents.

(Running time: 112 minutes)

So I saw 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'

I've got a little theory: the longer you look forward to a movie, the smaller the pay-off will be. For instance, this is true for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005), which I looked forward to for almost a year but when it finally came out my expectations had got build up so high, it didn't stand a chance.

The same is also true for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Which was bound to happen following yours truly partaking for more than a year in the online buzz surrounding this follow-up to Transformers (2007).

Transformers hit me like a train because the hype preceding it largely escaped me, and when it hit theatres my enthusiasm was very much intact; I had after all no expectations, I went in with a clean sheet. With ROTF I left crumbs of my enthusiasm with every post I made online, so when the movie hit theatres it was pretty much chipped away at.

ROTF picks up where Transformers left two years after. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is off to college, he's in love with high school sweetheart Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox), and everything is peaches and cream until he lays hands on and touches a stray fragment of the Cube and starts to see strange symbols projected inside his head. Separately, a special combat unit which, with the help of the Autobots, has been searching and destroying stray Decepticons on planet Earth, learns about the presence of the Fallen (Megatron's superior). The two subplots intertwine when it is identified that the symbols are key to identifying the location of an ancient energy-generating machine which the Fallen yearns to posses for his schemes and which, if activated, would use up our Sun as fuel.

The movie's tonal feel has a Saturday-morning-cartoon quality to it, which I assume is the only quality you want to strive for in a movie that is based on a Saturday morning cartoon. On a critical note: there's too much stuff going on. The action scenes, the explosions are rather numbing and take away from the funny and the magic that made Transformers Transformers. Considering that even Two-Face in The Dark Knight (2008) felt excessive, ROTF could certainly do with less.

Bigger is not always better.

(Running time: 150 minutes)