Whose bright idea was it this time?

The geniuses in Hollywood seem to be confused.

This is no great shock, they've been confused for years. They make poor excuses for films and then lament that we refuse to spend $10 to go see it in a theater with a bunch of rude people who won't stop texting long enough to see the movie.

It is summertime now. Summer means popcorn films and blockbusters. Summer is the time of year when people go to see things explode on the screen. This is no surprise, it's been this way most of my life.

My big issue this summer is with Michael Bay. Yeah, I know. Just the name Michael Bay makes most people who appreciate 'good' movies cringe. One thing you need to admit is few know how to make things explode like Mr. Bay.

I have boys. They are 11 and 8. They love Transformers! I don't live in a house, I live on Cybertron. Transformers are toys. They are designed as toys. There are heroes and villains, kids can use them to role-play good versus evil.

It seems that Michael Bay and Steven Speilberg have forgotten that Transformers are toys. (What I find laughable was Speilberg removed the guns from the re-issue of E.T. because he believes in peaceful solutions.)

The new movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen pushes PG-13 to the hard edge of R.

The first Transformers movie was questionable with Sam Witwicki's obsession with a female classmate and Sam's mom speaking about his 'happy time' raised questions many parents were uncomfortable addressing with their kids. The movie was highly entertaining and everyone I know saw it at least a few times in the theater and then still bought it when it came out on DVD.

There is nothing subtle about Revenge of the Fallen.

Several things have happened since the first movie came out a few years ago.
The rise of the frat-boy comedy led by the Judd Apatow crowd have brought back R-rated comedies with a vengeance. Now, I actually have no problem with that. Moviegoers are free to see what they choose. When I saw Superbad, I knew it was going to be raunchy, and it was rated appropriately. Clerks II definitely earned it's R. Knock-Up, The Hangover, The 40-Year Old Virgin and the rest have all hit their target audiences and there is nothing wrong with that.

Another thing that happened was the economy started to go south. As a consequence, people are going to the movies less and less. This means cross-marketing. They cut previews to appeal to an audience that would not normally have given the movie a second thought.

There are two distinct target audiences for Transformers:

Target One are the kids who are playing with them now. These are the kids watching Gen 1 on DVD, Beast Wars, Energon, and Animated on TV and love these toys!

Target Two are the fanboys. Fanboys are the adults who grew up on Transformers the first time around. My brother, my husband and a good amount of my friends are in this group.

These two diverse demographic groups surprisingly had the same expectations of Revenge of the Fallen. They wanted to see Prime and Megatron fight and blow stuff up. A lot.

Everyone I've talked to said the special effects were amazing and I agree. The problem is they tried to appeal to the frat-boy crowd as well. There is no excuse in the world for sexualizing Sam's parents, having them discuss Sam's sex life, showing Sam's mom on pot and being lewd and obnoxious. There's no excuse in the universe for having the 'Twins', Skids and Mudflap be 'ghetto'. It was bad enough to hear Ironhide bust out a swear word but to have the twins say 'motherfu' and then have it cut off is inexcusable!! They gave demolisher scrotum and no one needed to see John Turturro in a thong. The 'pretender' skin-job Transformer who was trying to seduce Sam was too much! An entire half hour could have been removed and no one would have been disappointed with the results.

The second credit that comes on the screen is Hasbro. Hasbro the toy company. Someone forgot that a movie about toys should be for kids and the fans of the toys. If you are making toys for Happy Meals, your movie should not be pushing an R-rating. It's really a simple formula to follow! What's next? A Barbie movie where she's a streetwalker with a heart of gold? It's probably in development as I write this.

What's truly laughable is the fanboys I know aren't attending a second time. They were off-put by the feeble attempts to drive the 'plot' with the humans by giving them these 'problems'. Again I state that people wanted to simply see big robots fight and blow stuff up!

What is sad is that Hollywood is capable of making inoffensive, exciting, action movies. The Mummy, National Treasure, Inkheart, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Spidy, Fantastic Four and still more family films and comedies like Napolean Dynamite, Elf, Night at the Museum and Hitchhiker's Guide were all enjoyable and entertaining without pushing the limits of decency.

So what have we learned? If you're movie isn't for kids, don't make Happy Meal toys for it! Kids grow up too fast as it is...do we really want to shorten their childhood?