An incredibly hard movie to review and rate, because it's a constant battle between the brain and the senses. After a decent start, the first hour is so full of silly, sometimes embarrassingly stupid humor, pointless minor characters and plot branches that don't get to the point that you actually wonder what you are doing here and where the big change is after part two was trashed by fans and critics and Michael Bay promised to do better this time. The humor does get better once Alan Tudyk enters the scene (if you ignore his awful entrance).

The good news is, the racist stereotype twins are not back. Instead we have JarJar-esque mini-Transformers with wild hair and drooling hunchback-Decepticons, even an inventor type (think James Bond's Q). Why humanize all those robots, when you could take it all a bit more seriously? The digs against the government and the UN are also incredibly stupid and hard to stomach for someone who doesn't think that military is the perfect solution for pretty much anything. Considering this is a film about two armies of robots fighting, it looks a lot like a military recruitment video. You also have to wonder why Bay takes such pleasure in filming slow-mos and close-ups of head shots and spines getting ripped out, which he can't do with humans for obvious reasons, so he lets robots do all that to each other. Uncomfortable.

It really is basically the same film as "Revenge of the Fallen". A convoluted mess that leads into a gigantic action sequence of epic proportions. Because things do get better in the second half, starting with a pretty good highway chase (which still has the same old problem of not really being able to tell all those robots apart in mid-action). You also have to admit that the film makes good use of 3D, maybe even the best since "Avatar", especially in the fantastic base-jumper scene. There are some more action scenes of pure brilliance, there is no denying that.

The greatest trick Michael Bay pulls here, is creating a 50-minutes showdown so spectacular, it makes us believe we actually saw a good film. You leave the movie theater both blown away and annoyed at the same time, when you think about what a sci-fi-action classic this could have been with just a little more brain. Or heart.

And if you wonder why I didn't say anything mean about Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, it's because she isn't all that bad and probably the least of the film's problems.

So, back to how hard it is to rate this film:
2 out of 10 Buzz Aldrins for the first hour and 8 out of 10 McDreamys for the last hour.