Look! They’re Moving…They’re Alive!

So far, this summer has turned out to be much ado about nothing.

Spirates of the Shrekibbean – I so wish I had coined that mash-up, but an Entertainment Weekly writer did (oh, the things you can come up with enough time…) – are now behind us, and although there’s plenty more to arrive in theaters until the season’s over, my hopes for a through-and-through satisfying summer blockbuster are dwindling.

Can Jason Bourne come home, already? Pretty please....

Transformers hasn’t restored my faith in quality summer fun, but it came close.

Michael Bay’s movie is an action-packed and very loud assault on the senses/trip down memory lane. It is unnecessarily long at 140 minutes, and while the script by Mission: Impossible III co-writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, borders on the cheesy and the preposterous, it is more than adequate.

The plot finds Earth caught in the middle of an intergalactic war between two races of robots, the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons, with It Boy Shia LaBeouf (Disturbia) and Megan Fox helping the former defeat the latter.

Purists beware: Bay has taken certain liberties (e.g., Bumblebee has been made over, from a VW Beetle to a 1978 Camaro, in the name of product placement) that surely will tick you off.

But this is Transformers. You are not going to buy a ticket for accuracy and/or believability; you are going to buy a ticket to be entertained. And that you will be – at least for the first hour, after which you’ll be wishing they’d wrap it up.

My Rating ***

Photo: DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures.