The dialogue, acting and writing are all appalling, but, hey, aren't the special effects great?

Rating: Null/10 (27 July 2011)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Transformers: Dark of the Moon manages the seemingly impossible task of being a film nearly three hours long that manages to move along with a plot so apathetic and piecemeal for that long, without giving the slightest suggestion that it does anything close to engaging you or holding your attention until all the big action starts and everything starts blowing up at the end. Like being told of The Promised Land and having faith until the big pay off comes, it has what can barely described as a 'story' (especially by someone not bowled over by the first two films) that after a hard day I have neither the time nor the inclination to describe.
"In the beginning, we were a peaceful race of mechanical beings..." From the off set, the serious attempts at dialogue serve as an indication of the unintentional laughs that are to follow, which are some of the few high points of forcing yourself to slog through this unthinkable third part of the soulless modern day Transformers franchise (but as long as they're making money, right?) Once again the script writers manage to get it all wrong, delivering characters that never come off as real people and dialogue and situations that sound even faker and less likely to happen. I said in my recent Wall Street 2 review that it would be better if Shia LeBeouf was in another Transformers film, well here he is, as bland and lifeless as the last two times, just one of quite a few actors failing to deliver rubies when handed pearls. Respectable, established actors like John Malkovich and Frances McDormand pop up in secondary roles, obviously trying to keep their dignity and not get dragged down with everything else but both really should have known better.
In all honesty, I have no right to complain about any of this, as I expected no less, but I had expected good stuff from what the film had been sold on, the special effects and in particular, what some had described as 'the greatest action sequences ever recorded to film' at the end, but even these I found to be under-whelming. Maybe I'd had enough of the relentless onslaught of mediocrity before it, or maybe there's nothing that can impress me any more, but it was the final part of what, like the last two films, had been a complete waste of my time. **