Rather enjoyed the first half, but not so much the unending fights of the machines in Chicago.

Rating: Null/10 (27 October 2011)

Saw it on DVD loaned from my public library system.
Shia LaBeouf is back as Sam Witwicky. The stage is set early in his apartment, with his very briefly clad girlfriend walking up the stairs to where Sam was still in bed. She(model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) is quite pretty. But Sam has a bigger issue at hand, his parents are coming to visit him in Washington, D.C. and he doesn't yet have a job, and that would be a big deal with mom and dad.
That is the personal and love-interest story. But the story about the autobots begins in 1962, with Kennedy as President. An impact of sorts is detected on the far side of the moon, and it is assumed the Russians, who the USA was in a space race against, were responsible. In this fictional story, it was this impact that was the catalyst for Kennedy to declare his intentions to send a man to the moon before the decade was over. And, we see again in this film, the moon landing in 1969 depicted.
But what was discovered in 1969 was a crashed space ship, one that contained remnants of the vanquished autobots. This was of course kept secret, but now in modern times artifacts brought back from the moon are on the verge of starting yet another autobot war on Earth.
The critic Ebert has a good, complete review. I enjoyed the first half of the movie, for its story line and tying it back to events in the 1960s. But as I have experienced with the other transformers movies, the fighting among the autobots wears thin long before each battle is over, and at a running time of right around 2.5 hours is too long for me.