How Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen Reviewers Are Trash Talking Video Games

I couldn't blame someone for comparing Michael Bay's big-screen take on Transformers to a video game. It's big, bombastic and deliberately designed to overstimulate your eyes and ears -- not unlike most games. But what I've been waiting to see is how movie critics handle that comparison. I combed through 38 reviews of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at Rotten Tomatoes for video game references.

I found some real gems, too, like this one:

"Is there anything in this for anyone other than a zit-faced video gamer?"-- Teletext

"Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky is once again our bland hero - boy gamers can't cope with signs of male non-conformism." -- Teletext

"The sinking of an aircraft carrier, an Optimus Prime vs. Megatron forest smackdown and the finale in Egypt may look cool, but by jettisoning character and story, Transformers 2 feels a bit like watching someone else play a video game for two and a half hours." -- Digital Spy

"As the director of this mega video-game-picture, Michael Bay unfairly will be blamed for all the deficiencies, even though his staging of action sequences and orchestration of special effects is the film's most entertaining element." -- Emanuel Levy, Cinema 24/7

"All this is spectacular and totally meaningless, like a video game transposed to the big screen and worked by a maniacal enthusiast. But Bay is only partly responsible. The list of his assistant technicians is endless — what fun they must have had. I can’t say I did." -- This Is London

"Here, as in a video game, all the players can call on more than one life, which serves to reduce considerably any sense of real peril." -- Eye For Film

This provides a little perspective on how other mediums continue to view video games. For the most part, though, they're inoffensive comparisons. The last one, from Eye For Film, was actually pretty clever.