Awesome

Rating: 10/10 (24 June 2009)

OK a little disclaimer first: yes critics hate it, but then again I hate movies that critics praise. I did not find anything wrong with this movie, any flaws are minor and hardly worth mentioning.
Soundtrack - excellent, pleasant, well-timed, has some rock songs which must be what scared the critics.
CGI - I don't even need to say anything, do I? Robots look truly amazing, I wish I've seen it when it was on big screen. And definitely a good idea to redesign them from the blocky simple cartoons this was based on. About those comments that mention that it was hard to tell which robot was which, well you should actually pay attention, Bay included a couple scenes on purpose in which all the robots on both sides are presented together with their names. I had no trouble telling them apart.
Special effects - just as good.
Action - fast-paced, desert scene reminiscent of Black Hawk Down. Robot fights are fluid and quick, unlike some action movies where the hero and the villain fight for half an hour in the end.
Plot - an interesting sci-fi premise, and believable as such, although the 'surprise' ending is predictable. Has the usual geek-likes-hot-girl-that-goes-out-with-a-jock beginning which could ruin a movie, but, thankfully, uses it only to introduce Shia's and Megan's characters.
Dialog might not be worth entering a poetry contest, but it goes along with the movie's pace well and has plenty of quotable moments.
Acting - in my opinion, the actors were great, conveying emotions and delivering dialogue lines well. Not sure what critics don't like about them. Some critics complain about slow motion shots of Megan, but there are much more slow motion shots of robots than her. One of them even had to be included as it fits well with the dialogues and entire scene.
Humor - surprisingly, IMDb doesn't even list comedy as one of the genres for this movie. It had several hilarious moments, scenes, and characters. I was pleasantly surprised by those, and I give credit to Bay for including them rather than trying to make a purely serious movie. I wouldn't have enjoyed the movie as much without them.
To add to that, I did watch Transformers like good 10-15 years ago, and hardly remembered them except for a few characters' names. The memories did make me very curious about this movie though, and I definitely wasn't disappointed.