Movie review: Transformers: Dark of the Moon (3D) *

Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Patrick Dempsey, Tyrese Gibson
Director: Michael Bay
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Southside Cinema week of Friday, July 22 - Friday-Saturday 8:15pm, Sunday 4:15/8:15pm, Monday-Tuesday 7:45pm, Wednesday Captain America at 8:15pm, closed Thursday. For more information about film times, call 297-2821.
Runtime: 154 minutes
Action/science-fiction

If Transformers 3 is not the summer’s lousiest whiz-bang movie, it is only because there is so much competition.

We pick up the story with the Autobots’ human ally Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) three months out of college and still unemployed.

True, he helped save the world twice, but in today’s job market it is all “what have you done for me lately?”.

His big break comes from a bug-eyed, grinning tycoon (John Malkovich) who challenges Sam to “impress me”.

Michael Bay (the computer programme created by producer Steven Spielberg to execute smash-bang summer blockbuster scripts) throws every possible emotional tone at the screen to see what sticks.

If audiences laugh, it is a moment of comedy; if they shriek, it is horror.

Transformers 3 is a hash of time-killing subplots involving Russian gangsters, Patrick Dempsey as a predatory boss and Sam’s tour of duty in the corporate mailroom.

The last 50 minutes are spent levelling Chicago, as the ’Bots and US armed forces throw down, with Sam, girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley), Lt Col Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and retired Master Sgt Epps (Tyrese Gibson) leading the counterattack.

Leonard Nimoy voices a new robot character named Sentinel Prime.

But the non-stop annihilation becomes obnoxious. The constant pounding  drives up one’s bloodlust to lynch-mob levels, encouraging us to revel in the sight of evil ’Bots being ripped limb from limb. Take heed, would-be evildoers.

Bay has made the robots bigger, the explosions explodier, and has cranked up the soundtrack until your skull goes numb.

The appropriate response is a deafening yawn.