Transformers

Sometime in the past, an old geezer called Wikywacky or something is exploring the North Pole (or somewhere really cold). He falls through a crack in the ice down to something that looks like the Fortress of Solitude from Superman II. Essentially a big icy room. So down there, the old man discovers a huge robot that may have been there several thousand years. He accidentally resets the robot's operating system (as you do) and one way or another the robot reflects the location of a magic cube that controls absolutely everything in the universe onto the old boy's glasses. And then old Wikywacky dies.

No, really.

Cut to the present day. It's all kicking off. More robots, bad ones - let's call them the Badtrons, have arrived on planet earth to get their tinny little hands on The Cube. They don't know where it is but they know a man who does. It's the old geezer's great grandson. Or grandson. Nobody seems to know for sure. This clueless gobashite (I can't remeber his name - let's call him Derek) has been trying to sell the magic glasses on ebay to raise money for a car. If he raises a few quid and studies hard his old man will get him a set of wheels. Not the car he wanted, mind you, but a junky old Camaro or a Pontiac or Thunderbird or something. There's a girl too. She's hot. But Derek is a bit of a dork and has no chance with Little Miss Hotstuff (except you know that he really does). Oh she's all kinds of foxy though. Let's call her Fidelma. So the junky car turns out to be a robot too. It transforms itself into a big walking robot thing. But it's one of the good robots. Let's call them the Goodtrons. The Goodtrons get to Derek and ask him for old Wikywacky's glasses. If they get the glasses then they can find out where The Cube is, kill the Badtrons, get back home to Robotland in time for Tron Idol and live happily ever after. Oh - we know all this because these fellas can talk too. They learnt how to talk from looking at the world wide web. So, one of them talks like Dirty Harry and one of them talks like Mr T. The others just sound like normal good guy robots. You know the type. Except for Derek's Robot car which desn't say anything at all until the end, when he comes across as maybe a little too clingy for a mighty world-saving Goodtron..

Oh - there's something else going on: America's Under Attack! The Badtrons have been on Air Force One stealing codes and killing secret service men. And they've been in Kerplakistan or somewhere like that stealing codes and killing soldiers. American soldeirs. Stars and Stripes forever and all that. Well that's just not on. So Jon Voight, or Christoper Walken - it's hard to tell the difference these days ( I think they both visit the same wig parlour), gets angry and runs around a lot. I think the Badtrons were stealing codes and copying files because the know that John Turturro (sleazy, excellent) has a secret little team of creepy agents who know where the cube is. Not sure about that though - it gets a bit frenetic. It turns out that The Cube is buried in the Hoover Dam. Just as well. Imagine if the robots got to California and learnt that The Cube was in Monaghan or Brussels or Sydney. Oh, speaking of which, there's an Australian girl. She's very smart. She knows all about computers. She has a little fat friend. He knows even more about computers. I don't really know what they were doing. She was very pretty though. Something for the boys who find Ms. Foxy a bit too intimidating.

From that point on, Transformers just gets a bit silly and unrealistic.. It's rubbish American blockbuster nonsense but at the same time, it's not really that bad. If you've seen Armegeddon or Pearl Harbour you've seen this. Apart from the transforming robots of course. It's bloody noisy too but that's nothing new.. And let's face it, the dialogue is so lame that whenever it quietens down you wish something would explode just so you don't have to listen to decent actors embarass themselves. Saying that, Shia LeBouef plays the young guy and he's not at all bad. He was in Bobby and A Guide to Recognising Your Saints earlier this year and was good in both of them. Particularly the Saints film. So he's set for bigger things. The girl, whose name I see is, appropriately enough, Megan Fox, doesn't have a lot to do. But what little she does she does in cropped top and tight jeans. The rest of them are just punching the clock and counting their money. All in all though, it wasn't the worst 2 hours I've spent in the cinema this year.. That's still Miss Potter. And it's going to take something special to top that!