The focus of the movie was just plain lost.

Rating: 1/10 (11 December 2008)

I should say now that I wasn't a huge Transformers fan growing up. Where I lived I couldn't easily get the cartoons and so on, so I only had a smattering of it now and then.
But even then this movie was terrible.
I'm not going to comment at length as others had on the focus on lame human characters in a movie essentially about giant robots. It might even be considered aside the point that these robots have had 20 years of refined character but in the movie were sidelined for horny teenagers.
But what bothered me (though didn't surprise me, considering it's Michael Bay) was the simple extensive focus on American things.
I understand, and it's okay, that the focus is on America. Most movies are. But the movie tried to pretend that an invasion from hostile alien robots only happened to Americans. This is quite silly.
What really got to me though, was that in a movie with, again, giant cool robots with alien technology and so on... Michael Bay was showcasing American military hardware. This could be fine in any of his other random summer action flicks, but in a movie with, I repeat, giant robots, it's stupid at best. We don't need to know, with Tom Clancy detail, about the weapons on American fighter jets. We don't care, or at least we shouldn't, when there are, again, Giant Robots to fill the screen regarding technology and action. It just seems like he doesn't know how else to make a movie if it doesn't zoom in on a fighter and tell you its schematics.
This, among the other points that other commenters have said with frequency, makes Transformers not just disappointing to fans, but just a nonsensical movie which, at its very best, is just bad and not to be taken seriously. Or hilarious, because it takes itself too seriously for the (lack of) quality in the plot.