Things that go clank: Bumblebee goes into battle in Dark of the Moon. Picture: Paramount Source: Supplied
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (M) Director: Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor) Starring: Shia LaBeouf and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (below), Patrick Dempsey, John Malkovich, Josh Duhamel and the voice of Leonard Nimo. Verdict: Clanks a lot for more of the same. Star rating: * *
ONE small step for man, one big payday for the franchise. So reads the report card for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the latest mega-budget action sequel of the US summer.
Filmed spectacularly in 3D, this third Transformers adventure looks destined to be remembered as the noisiest, boys-iest release of 2011.
Clocking in at a mammoth 2 1/2 hours, it is a rambunctiously hollow echo chamber of smashing glass, clanking steel and exasperated grunts and groans.
Much of the latter will surely hail from the audience as it wonders if the non-stop audio-visual assault will end. As anyone would while watching a 150-minute movie about shape-shifting robots with hot tempers, long-time grudges and world-domination issues.
As with earlier instalments, the shots are called on Transformers: Dark of the Moon by the notorious Michael Bay. This guy directs pictures with all the subtlety of someone operating a chainsaw in a library.
Give Bay enough cameras to shake, stuff to smash up and women to drool over, and he'll deliver what every easily pleased (and easily aroused) teenage boy wants to see.
Despite the title, much of the Bay-hem coursing through Dark of the Moon still takes place on Earth.
After an admittedly compelling, if goofy, prologue detailing the secret role Transformers played in the 1960s space race, the film switches back to familiar territory.
While the good-guy Autobots and the bad-dude Decepticons do their best to destroy each other, pesky humanoid Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) must save his new girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a Victoria's Secret model brought in to replace Megan Fox) from never-ending unfriendly fire.
The extended sequences where the machines go into smackdown mode are handled much better than in the dreadful Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The writers have taken a little more time to explain the who, what and why behind all the whacking.
The involvement of Leonard Nimoy (voicing the long-lost Autobot warrior-inventor Sentinel Prime) lends proceedings a smidgeon of dignity, a word not normally associated with all things Transformers-ly.
While Dark of the Moon isn't a tired movie experience - the wizardry has moments of near-Avatar brilliance - it can be a tiring one.
Recruits to the franchise such as John Malkovich (as Sam's eccentric boss), Frances McDormand (a tough CIA honcho) and Patrick Dempsey (the leading human villain) do not improve proceedings with their presence.
Playing key sidekicks to Sam, regulars John Turturro and Josh Duhamel also have little to no impact.
Indicative of Dark of the Moon's capacity to deliver too much of a just-OK thing, the standout sequence - an apocalyptic battle in the 9/11-like ruins of a destroyed Chicago - does not arrive until the two-hour mark.
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