There is something so very, very wrong about a movie that exists for solely these two reasons: 1.) to get children of the '80s to try and experience some sort of nostalgia by watching their favorite action toys of childhood come to life, and 2.) to get a new generation of kids to buy those same toys. Yes, toy manufacturer Hasbro has teamed up with two major studios—the kind of unholy marriage you can only get out of Hollywood—to bring us Transformers, and it is probably the worst computer-generated-special-effects-driven summer blockbuster to ever disgrace the screen. The script, with its generic setup, dialogue, and humor, feels like it was written by and for kids eight and under. The screenplay is so incoherent, so jumbled, and so lazy, leaving multiple threads dangling and unanswered, there were moments in which I thought I had blacked out. That's not to mention the countless other times I wish I had. No, it's just written as though screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman either had no attention spans and/or expected that the audience wouldn't have them. And Michael Bay doesn't help either.

The Transformers are robots from another planet that can transform into machines—primarily vehicles. Some are good; some are bad. They fight. This is made to seem grander in the hilarious opening narration, which tells us of something called "The Cube" or the "Allspark," which is a cube that can mutate machines into robots which can mutate into machines. So which came first? Who the hell cares? Just listen to how seriously intoned this opening monologue is and be dumbfounded that someone wrote it and made money doing so. Anyway, a military base in Qatar (which we are told—not once but twice—is in the Middle East) is attacked by one of the Transformers, which turns from a helicopter into a robot that blows stuff up real good and proper. This is problematic for Sgt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel), because he has a new baby daughter at home. Yes, that's all the character development this movie can stand. Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf, whose dry, sarcastic persona serves as a saving grace) buys his first car, a yellow Camaro (more General Motors cars follow), hooks up with his crush Mikaela (Megan Fox), finds out about the whole Transformers war, and holds the fate of the world in his great-grandfather's spectacles.

Yes, Sam's great-grandfather's glasses hold the map to the Allspark, and that means his new Camaro, actually named Bumblebee, and the other good Autobots have to hold off the forces of the Decepticons, the bad robots. How robots are good or bad, I don't know.