Where are the transformers?

Rating: 1/10 (23 August 2010)

The movie starts off with with Peter Cullen explaining what the cube (later on renamed the all spark) is, and that a war was fought over it and that it is now needed to rebuild their home world.
Then we get to follow Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and his men as they set the tone for the movie talking about what they miss back home, their kids, etc when they are interrupted by a transformer whom we won't get to see much more than his helicopter form of, his robot form being distorted by objects blocking him, shaky hand held "action shots" and sunlight hitting the lens, explosions or other lightning effects.
9 minutes in we are introduced to Sam (Shia LaBeouf) and his teenage problems. The film then continues to switch between military scenes and scenes with Sam until 40 minutes in where Captain Lennox and his squad are fight a huge metal scorpion for 4 minutes, the scorpion for the most part being covered by sand. (doesn't transform) The 2 fight scenes are poorly choreographed and mostly consist of fast movement, shaky camera action, explosions and crouching soldiers shooting at something off screen paired with shots of military command and airplane photography. - A concept that will last throughout the rest of the movie, with the only added addition of robots fighting pasted in.
It gives off the feel of being 2 scripts (a boy and his car) and (Captain Lennox blows stuff up) frankensteined together by someone with a very vague idea of what the transformers brand has been about the last quarter of a century, who had to work the transformers in because he had to, rather than having the story be about the transformers.
Besides the opening speech we don't hear anything from a transformer for 33 minutes when we get 5 lines written out as translated from cybertronian and the first spoken lines from a transformer are 51 minutes in, this also makes up for all the dialog from transformers within the first hour. 9 lines from the actual transformers, a feat usually surpassed within 40 seconds in the original TV series.
Maybe its just me, but if I go to see a movie about the transformers I want to see transformers, I want to know who they are and what makes them tick, instead we have extras getting more lines (and given more personality) than the transformers who are supposed to be the main characters. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie where the main characters didn't say more than 9 lines in the first hour - and for good reason.
If you don't know anything about transformers and enjoy shaky action shots of soldiers shooting at robots and can't be bothered with details such as who or why then you will get a kick out of this movie - if you however were a transformers fan prior to seeing this movie and are looking forward to seeing some classic interaction and getting reacquainted with Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Wheeljack & the others or if you are merely someone who cares about plot and the personality of your movie characters then you are better off watching something like Avatar.
I wish I could give this one more than 1 star, and maybe I would had I not known anything about the transformers and weren't expecting the movie to be about transformers. But as it stands I have a hard time giving it more than 1 star.