Third 'Transformers' a big, silly bore
It takes about an hour and a half for Michael Bay's shrill and noisy action thriller "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" to get to the good stuff.
And when I write "good stuff," I really mean the stuff that's not as bad as the stuff in the rest of the movie.
At the 95-minute mark, the battle between the bad Decepticons and the good Autobots comes to the Windy City where we see our beloved skyscrapers and favorite stores blown to smithereens, torn to pieces and reduced to rubble.
That's fun for a while.
Still, "Dark of the Moon" is one of the dumbest, silliest alien invasion movies to come down the cinematic pipeline since "Skyline."
At least Bay's second "Transformers" sequel is a slight improvement over his first, "Revenge of the Fallen," which featured three main characters being "killed," then being magically resurrected.
Shia LaBeouf stars once again as Sam, who has gone from an American hero to a college grad desperately looking for work.
His new girlfriend, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, bumping out Megan Fox from the earlier films), looks like a fashion model with other redeeming features. She's employed by the wealthy and lecherous Dylan (Patrick Dempsey), who has his eye on Carly.
Bay doesn't handle women characters very well, but then he doesn't handle the men much better.
The plot has a clever premise. Our rush to land men on the moon was prompted by the crash-landing of a UFO on the moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin actually makes a cameo early in story, which doesn't increase the movie's credibility but certainly decreases Aldrin's.
Turns out there's a device aboard the spaceship on the moon that the Decepticons need to open up a portal that will destroy the earth.
It's up to Sam and the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime, to keep the Decepticons from achieving their goal.
"Dark of the Moon" almost would be a better movie had it not included any actual human characters. The special effects are the stars here.
Bay's special effects should be top-notch, but they are diminished by 3D - it makes them look vapid, flat and dark.
But that's Bay's movie: a big arsenal of shiny explosions geared toward 10-year-old boys who don't really care about much more than watching things blow up while booming noises go off and a tattered American flag waves in the wind.
There is one sequence that almost musters some real suspense: the Decepticons try to topple a Chicago skyscraper while the heroes are falling out of the building. The lucky ones don't survive.
“Transformers: Dark of the Moon”
★ ½
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Kevin Dunn
Directed by: Michael Bay
Other: A Paramount Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual situations and violence. 154 minutes