Films directed by Michael Bay are usually like being shouted at by a halfwit for two and a half hours, and Transformers is no exception. The CGI-heavy remake of the utterly rubbish and inexplicably popular 1980s TV cartoon series is a petrol-headed wet dream, more monster truck rally than a movie in any satisfying sense of the word. There’s a particularly charming moment when one of the robots fumbles around in its metal groin area and then pees a stream of diesel on to John Turturro (John, what happened? From Coen brothers collaborator to this?).

That moment more than anything sums up everything I hate about Bay’s braindead machismo – this dumb, thuggish movie is the directorial equivalent of Bay beating his chest and waving his penis at us for a couple of hours.

The human star of the film is Shia LaBeouf. He’s a young actor who has given other, infinitely better performances in previous roles, but here he’s virtually unwatchable. His acting is permanently pitched at panic level, which means he does lots of unintelligible shouting and constantly looks as if he’s about to be drenched with nervous sweat.

BACKGROUND

• Transformers

• Robots are just foreign policy in disguise

• The 50 best movie robots

• The Transformers: The Movie

• They're back: the revenge of the '80s

Transformation is complete

Shia LaBeouf trashed a director’s office to prove that he was no longer a ‘Disney kid’. Our correspondent asks what drives him

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

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• The 50 Best Robots: Disqualified Contenders

LaBeouf (every time I type that name it seems more preposterously silly) plays a high school outsider called Sam Witwicky, a kid seemingly doomed to a life of mediocrity by his father’s unfeeling decision not to buy him a Porsche. Instead poor Sam has to make do with a beaten-up and luridly painted Chevy Camaro, a muscle car with a bit of a limp.

Despite the dents, the Camaro impresses the school hottie, Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox). She has the looks of a cheerleader and the mind of a mechanic (forget about robots that turn into juggernauts, there’s the really farfetched piece of science fiction).

Fox clearly did all her research for the role in a tanning booth. Her skin is mahogany and so is her performance. But that probably doesn’t matter because her main function in the film is simply to be a vehicle for a large pair of breasts.

The human cast is rounded out by Josh Duhamel and the former model Tyrese Gibson who play the most photogenic (and therefore the most likely to survive) of a US Special Forces team that is the first to encounter the most destructive of the Transformers, a cross between a helicopter, a kitchen blender and a giant, rage-filled scorpion made of steel.

But who really cares about the cast? Transformers nerds are too busy comparing notes on the hubcap authenticity and engine size of the real stars of the film, a bunch of CGI robot cars that deliver lines that thud like chunks of metal and spend ages trying to bash the paint off each other. It’s Wrestlemania meets Scrap Heap Challenge. And my goodness it’s boring.

However showy the special effects – and I grudgingly have to admit that the effects are technically impressive – there’s just nothing involving about the action and nothing engaging about the Transformers themselves. There’s also very little to help a novice such as myself tell these robots-in-disguise apart. At the end of a city-smashing, civilian-squashing climax, one of the good transformers (an Autobot rather than a Decepticon) dies. I couldn’t work out which one it was. But then I didn’t care either.

The really sickening thing about this big, loud and deeply stupid movie is how well it has already done at the box office. An interminable franchise of idiotic, obscenely expensive films is practically a certainty. So come on, people, let’s try to postpone the inevitable. Don’t go and see it. Spend your money elsewhere. Let’s disprove the current thinking in Hollywood that anything that makes a lot of noise will automatically make a lot of money.

12A, 146mins

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