Transformers is a great movie with a pretty good storyline and a decent cast.It is a bit long but the two and a half hours fly by.I enjoyed the action in the movie,although it did go on a bit too long many times,sometimes so much that you would forget whats happening,but it is very well directed by Michael Bay.I enjoyed Shia LaBeouf a lot in this,but,although she is very attractive,Megan Fox is not a very good actress,I feel like she just says her lines and she probably wouldn't have got in to acting if it wasn't for how good looking she is,I definitely think a better actress like Emma Stone or Amanda Seyfried could have put in a better performance as this character.The best part for me is without a doubt the robots themselves,Optimus Prime,Bumblebee and the rest of the Autobots and Decepticons are beautifully animated and the voice work is outstanding.While Transformers has many flaws,its still very enjoyable and I would recommend it to all fans of Michael Bay and the Transformers in general.

A long fighting race of robots,the Autobots and the Decepticons,head to Earth and one young teenager might be able to fix things.

Proof, if proof were needed, of the way in which Hollywood blockbusters have been successfully dumbing down in the past thirty years, TRANSFORMERS is a bloated mess that contains genre staples and not one jot of originality. It's a story of cool special effects and not a lot else – and leaves me wondering why there was a need to have any human interest in the film whatsoever. Why not just focus on the robots and leave it at that? Michael Bay is far from a favourite director, but I used to get a kick out of his epics like Armageddon. TRANSFORMERS makes that movie look like a masterpiece in retrospect.

The main problem is with the script. Clearly aiming the franchise at the American male teenager demographic, we get toilet humour (watch out for the 'hilarious' scene where a transformer urinates fuel on a bad guy),crass jokes (the one about masturbation is the most unnecessary and dumb),the ubiquitous Anthony Anderson (as unbelievable as a computer hacker as Denise Richards was a nuclear scientist in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH) and the appearance of what must be the dumbest bimbo (Megan Fox) seen on screens in a long while. Running in at almost two and a half hours, this could easily have lost an hour and a half, because it's unbelievably padded. The first hour only just introduces the characters, and the last half hour is an action scene. Cut out all the stupid jokes, all the poor acting from the rubbish Shia LaBeouf, the overacting John Turturro, and the do-anything-for-a-buck Jon Voight, and you're left with a cartoon that's not even as good as the original TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE, an animation made back in 1986.

Bay overdirects things as per usual and borrows some shaky-cam effects in an effort to up the tension, but the result is that much of the action is just a blur of computer effects. Saying that, the special effects ARE impressive, and I absolutely loved the look of the transformers themselves. It's just a shame they couldn't have appeared in a better film. The only bit worth watching is the city battle at the climax, a massive, special-effects filled, ten-explosions-a-minute action sequence that reminded me of those old Toho monster bashes. Seeing giant monsters tossing cars, smashing buildings, tearing each other to pieces and battling the military makes for a highly entertaining section, and must have cost an absolute packet to put together. If they repackaged the movie, removing Shia LaBeouf and including just this 30-minute scene, I'd probably buy it. But I have no inclination to go near TRANSFORMERS ever again. Spielberg, who's clearly in this for the money alone, should be absolutely ashamed of himself.

The Autobots and the Decepticons bring their war from the planet of Cybertron to Earth. They battle for the Allspark which is a mystical source of unimaginable power. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) has artifacts from his grandfather who met a giant robot in his arctic expedition.

This is a much better movie than I could ever expect. I had serious reservations when I first heard that Michael Bay was going to make a live action Transformers movie. The CGI looks great. Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox actually work. They have spark and charisma. The action is massive and impressive.

It's the story where the movie has a few problems. It's convolute and too complicated. But nobody watches this for the story. We watch it for the action.