Shouldn't a movie about transformers be about transformers?

Rating: 3/10 (28 November 2011)

I watched this over the weekend and I have to say, about 20-30 minutes of it was kind of cool. I wish I could say something kind about the rest of it... This chapter manages to throw a bunch of wacky, useless human characters in this time in addition to the normal cast of blahish human characters (the crazy boss, or the insane Asian coworker, or even the can do everything assistant with gimmicky accent (and only likable because of the actor, none other than the pilot from Firefly), who happens to be more useful than his boss - the returning character by John Turturo, why is this character still in these movies?) Even the Sam Witwicky main character seems to have had his wackiness quotient upped in this chapter. Oh, and the new 'human villain', played by Patrick Dempsey... what a dreadful character made likable only in the slightest sense because of the charmingness of the actor, but otherwise, what a terribly drawn character in the movie only to have our 'hero' have something to fight against. The characters are pretty one dimensional, except for maybe Sentinel Prime, but only because they kind of forced character development on this character for the plot's sake (which is an awful way to develop a character).
It's too bad Megatron, who still doesn't sound right, is relegated to a secondary villain in this. The Decepticons all look kind of similar, again, except for Shockwave, though it's not like they do much with his character, and the Autobots fare better... but they seem to disappear during a huge stretch in the final part of the movie for no good reason other than so we can spend more time following the actions of human characters I could care less about.
What little bits of story about the actual transformers is kind of cool, but much of it is underdeveloped. Too much of the movie insists on following the Sam Witwicky character and his employment. The near post apocalyptic feel of the last stretch of the movie is kind of cool, if only the transformers weren't kept in the shadows (instead of us seeing them planning their strategy and see how that plays out, we see nothing but them popping up near the end to declare they will kill every last deceptacon and a little bit of battle between them to go along with that).
Ridiculous battle moments include the Sam Witwicky character shooting some stupid little grappling claw weapon to once again send the actor flying around (do we not remember how bad it came off seeing that same actor jumping around on vines like Tarzan in the last Indiana Jones movie.)? Come on! If you liked the first movie, you'll probably like this. Yet again, too much time on human characters trying to be funny and/or wacky through much of the running time instead of being about the actual Transformers (you'd think they might actually develop the characters' who the movie is named after). *sigh* Thank god this is Michael Bay's last Transformers movies. Maybe one day, I'll be able to see a Transformers movie (a reboot in a few years, maybe), that is actually ABOUT the Transformers. Give us a story where they are the focus, where they are multifaceted characters. Make us feel their struggle. Don't make a movie about a bunch of human characters with Transformers thrown in just 'cause as generic robots. I'd much rather have the movie streamlined and just be cool big f'in robots fighting each other in a war. Not my ideal Transformers movie, but I could at least have enjoyed that more, for more of the running time, if nothing else, but for its cool visceral, robot f/x and action sequences.