REVIEW: Transformers: Dark of the Moon Is Straight-Up Michael Bay, for Better or Worse

The second half of Dark of the Moon is louder and much more overwhelming than the first, and even though everything on offer is unapologetically Bay-like in its excessiveness and extravagance, it's still too much of only a semi-good thing. Some of the effects are quite spectacular; there are just too many of them. Bay, working with cinematographer Amir Mokri, has, unlike so many current filmmakers, actually taken some care with his 3-D effects. The heads of LaBeouf and Huntington-Whiteley often resemble glowing orbs floating in space: Even when he's just showing us potentially boring stuff, like human beings talking indoors, Bay makes them look more like gods walking the earth than like boring old actors.

But Bay is really gonzo with the action sequences; they wowed me less into a state of amazement than into a stupor, which perhaps qualifies as a bit too much wowing. One of the most impressive creations here is the massive and terrifying alien creature known as Shockwave. He -- it? -- undulates above, below and through parched dirt landscapes, pavement, skyscrapers, you name it, with the effortless grace of a snake rendered in supple, malevolent metal. Other terrifying creatures and objets either swoop down from the sky or, more unnervingly, hover in the air with malicious intent. If you're planning to bring tiny tots to Dark of the Moon, you should know that many helpless human bodies are trampled in the elaborate, overlong Decepticon invasion of Chicago, which makes up the movie's last third. That siege doesn't seem any more "real" than anything else in Dark of the Moon, but then, it's not believability that triggers nightmares.

Bay throws so much visual mightiness at us that, long before the two-hour mark, impressive individual details begin to seem inconsequential. Late in the movie, there's a wonderful sequence in which a group of paratroopers leap from an aircraft as Decepticon evildoers swoop around them. Dressed in black-and-white webbed outfits, they drift and float through the ashy air, like flying squirrels disguised as flying nuns. (Those special-ops guys sure are sneaky.) The sound -- including Steve Jablonsky's Earth-conquering score, which out-Wagners Wagner -- drops for a moment to a blessedly dull roar.

That's about as much subtlety as Bay is capable of, even though no one goes to a Michael Bay movie for subtlety. I remember hating the experience of watching Revenge of the Fallen, which seemed crass and moneygrubbing in the worst way. I had a much better time watching the first Transformers, which I downloaded in a Russian-dubbed version -- the movie makes no discernible sense in any language, which is comforting. Watching Transformers: Dark of the Moon, I wilted like Fay Wray in the grasp of King Kong. There's no use fighting Michael Bay; he only laughs as I pummel him with my tiny fists. The only thing to do is to succumb, and bring a few Excedrin in case you need them.

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