I am stunned by the number of reviews saying that the movie is fantastic. Yes, the CGI is brilliant. But when I spend my dollars to 'see' a movie, I expect there will be a good story behind the visual effects. In this case, what you get is a succession of rapid-fire clichés that are so 'in your face' that it's offensive... The main character is not good at school, and dreams of a girl who goes out with the school's bully - a football player... And this under-achiever finally gets the girl... There are cool cars, and a cool car chase (not as good as the one in the second matrix movie though)... Can it get more cliché than that I ask you? And most adults and authority figures are stupid to say the least... Only the military guys are OK, figures since Bay has to take care of his good relations with the Pentagon since 'Pearl Harbor'... The US government hiring teenagers (because they're soooo coool?) to hack into the Transformers as if the Pentagon and CIA just could not figure out by themselves how to do that is another example of how completely ridiculous the movie is. It is so unbelievable that it can't be fun... There is no imagination whatsoever in this movie...
I'm not 15, and I don't expect movies to unfold like video games, so I hated this movie and almost stopped watching it after 40 minutes. When I returned the movie to the rental DVD club, one employee told me that most customers felt just like I did... But those customers, like me, were not 15...
In a nutshell, this movie is for young teenagers even though the Transformers are 20 years old... I'm not happy to say that this is probably one of the 3 worst movies I've seen in my life... It still gets 2 stars because of the visual FX, but I'm tempted to say that it deserves one at best...