Good special effects, mostly cool robots, forget all else

Rating: 3/10 (9 July 2009)

Plot: Was there one? Plot holes and a showcase for the American military, perhaps. 1. Sam finds a fragment of the most important and thought to be lost forever Cybertronian artifact, and he gives it to his girlfriend and doesn't even mention it to Optimus. 2. Sam's kitchen bursts with tiny Decepticons and Bumblebee doesn't ask him about it? And doesn't tell Optimus either? 3. The Primes sacrifice themselves to encase the Matrix Key with their "it takes a shot or two to get through" bodies, instead of staying alive, hiding or not. 4. The Decepticons are running low on Energon, but they squander it creating more of them (not quite well explained either) and letting some of them die of weakness. 5. The Decepticons depend on that last shard - apparently there's two of those - of the Matrix. When they locate Sam's, do they send Ravage and the other deadly Decepticon? No, they send an incompetent Wall-E. And WHY the leg humping? 6. The Decepticons apparently have the tech to disguise as humans, making it possibly easier to find all sorts of secrets, infiltrate whatever is not maximum security, but they chose to infiltrate a college campus. 7. The shard can turn machines into Decepticons, but apparently nothing ever turns into an Autobot. 8. Devastator could have beaten the crap out of everyone in the battle but I guess it's preferable to try to do all at once and keep your giant monster away from the enemies he might kill quickly. And wait, it's safe beneath him, he's never going to remember to crush you. 9. Decepticons arrive on Earth falling from space, but nobody seems to notice and do something about preventing that. 10. There was perhaps a point in kidnapping Sam's parents, but that was lost as well.
Also, falling and being thrown around like puppets doesn't break anyone's bones and rarely draws a drop of blood. The college scenes are soft core, there's little about Sam's ambitions and depth, even less about Mikaela's. The army veterans fight the meany "suits", who "just don't understand" them. People just bounce around the globe so they can fight robots in the desert. Again.
Dialogue: I hadn't seen these many one-liners and clichés since Catwoman. I winced at Optimus's "I rise, you fall". Plenty of silly comedy, the only thing that happens when robots aren't shooting or ripping each other to pieces. Starscream probably has the best lines and is loyal to his cartoon persona.
Acting: Sorry Megan Fox, I know the dialogue is terrible, but you belong in a centerfold. The rest is average, uneven.
Robots: The bots look cool, wish I could actually take a good look at most of them and try to discern their features and understand what I was looking at. Aside from half a dozen, all robots are extras, soldiers. I would care more for the robots being hurt and destroyed if I at least knew their names. The two very, very bad stereotypical Autobots get more camera time than Ironhide or Ratchet, or the new Arcees. Some of them have abilities that you'd think all of them could benefit from, and probably obtain. But they don't.
Humans: Wow, so many military people. I know the movie has to focus on human and robot relations, but the generals and such, who nobody cares about, got more camera time than many Autobots.
There's more, but I guess I made my point.