I think I damaged my brain. Sorry, let me say that again in Transformer lingo: “My circuits have been shorted!” Remember when Transformers was a cartoon full of bad robotic and car puns? Michael Bay doesn’t. I can’t tell exactly what he’s doing, so here’s my best shot:

Pink Floyd helped NASA fake the moon landing for publicity, an act which Shia LaBeouf would need to imitate in order to land a job, despite his resume as “that kid who was there when giant robots saved the world.” The Decepticons, big fans of Pink Floyd, are chilling on the moon and waiting for the comeback tour so they can finally turn on their teleportation device and move their interstellar spaceships the last few feet to Earth for an invasion. The Autobots are spending their free time saving humanity by blowing up the parts of humanity that don’t agree with the parts they happened to align with, while Megatron develops a secret “bro-mance” with Optimus Prime that prevents him from actually using the invasion force that has been stashed there for who-knows-how-long. Patrick Dempsey has sold his soul to the Decepticon Overlords in order to work for a demonic robot Pterodactyl in an effort to replace Tom Cruise as the most attractive crazy man on Earth. Megan Fox is now blonde and from another country (or has been replaced by an equally useless heroine; hard to tell, hard to care). Humans are training to be as cool as giant robots, learning to fly to compensate for an inability to do needless flips and spins while fighting. Most of the world is flammable and downright explosive. And last but not least: even the end of the world can’t get Ken Jeong to play a new role, but Alan Tudyk is still the man.

In short: few things in this movie work well, if at all. There are plot holes large enough to drive a deluxe Optimus-Prime-complete-with-trailer through and Bay goes the X3: The Last Stand route by throwing in a bunch of cool characters with no adequate back story in an effort to show us how cool they are. The first half of the movie is failed characterization of the humans which becomes irrelevant as more and more giant robots start blowing things up, including an attempt to make us embrace Sam’s new girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). She is introduced to us pant-less and from underneath and proceeds to actually lose class and character from there on until contributing her one big effort to the fight: a pep talk on being evil to a moping Megatron. I wish I was kidding! The only thing that could out-do that would be if X-Men: First Class featured Dr. Phil helping an ambitionless Magneto learn to harbor grudges. This franchise is in desperate need of characters that are at least in some ways believable (something it’s lacked since Jon Voight disappeared). Everyone feels like a bunch of zany quirks held together by attractiveness and it makes one wonder if all of the energy floating around hasn’t scrambled everyone’s brains. The only thing left is a very un-subtle need to develop patriotic motifs that culminates in a George W-esque speech in front of a waving American flag at the end of the film. Oh, and Leonard Nemoy’s ability to reference Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn, despite being an alien robot-being.

It’s customary for me to say nice things at the end of a review, so I’ll try really hard. The action sequences, to no one’s surprise, are pretty cool. But three hours of explosions seemed a little excessive. Cars are cool. Especially when they drive really fast and turn into giant robots. Military guys are also cool and they can now fly, kind of. If not for Alan Tudyk’s entertaining turn as a hacker/retired badass with an implacable accent and a bunch of good friends to mock the film as it happened, I would declare this a total bust. I hope it syncs up with the Wizard of Oz. Otherwise it’s worthless. Either way, I’m pretending the franchise ended with the first film.

For wasting three hours and $4.00 on tired and sloppy writing, I give Transformers: Dark of the Moon a 3 out of 10.