Wow.  Just, wow.  That was an awesomely bad script.  Howlingly bad.  The kind of bad that you have to get a running start to overtake, and once you do, you regret it because your feet are all smelly and you're hot and tired bad.  Okay, I lie.  The script wasn't stinky feet bad.  It was just lame.  And that's okay, because this is not a film that hinges on dialogue or plot.  This is a film that is made or killed by the visual effects.

Made.  Totally made.

Director Michael Bay has managed to bring giant CGI robots to life and get them to flow back and forth between forms naturally, with enough realism to make the suspenders of disbelief stretch but not snap.  (At times the lines on the robots were too clean for ancient war machines, and even the dust looked too polished, but it's not jarring enough to pull the audience out of the movie.)  Not a bad accomplishment.

And oh!  Those visuals.  The audience in the theatre with me this time around was clearly filled with fen.  People broke out into applause whenever a new 'bot appeared, and we all cheered when Prime took on the form of the semi.  The combat scenes were eye-popping with the constant transformations and sense of motion.  While in "Spider-Man 3" earlier this year, the motion was occasionally enough to induce nausea, even the revolving-camera shots here kept the solid forms in frame to show off the pretty.  It's not as high-quality camera work, but it does work to bring across just how amazing these beings are and how jaw-dropping they would be if this were real.  Special kudos to overcoming one of the chief handicaps of the original series: the scene with the police car toying with Sam was actually scary.

Speaking of Sam, Shia LaBeouff is amazing.  When I say the words "bad script" (and rest assured I was saying them a lot during the film itself) I have to give credit where it's due.  LaBeouff rose above the material.  Most of the cast did what they could with what they had, and none of the humans gave a bad performance.  Technically, none of the CGI characters did, either, but poor Peter Cullen had to keep reciting lines from the original cartoon, and they were corny back then, too.  (Note to screenwriters: voiceovers usually suck.)  I wasn't initially pleased with the decision to make Bumblebee a non-speaking character until I found out what he would have been given to say, and dude, great directing choice!  Two thumbs up!  In fact, great work all around on the character.  I've had a crush on Bumblebee since I was ten, and one of my favorite parts of the film was the choice to make the SpikeSam-Bumblebee friendship the entry point for the viewers.  I saw a few reports that tried to label the film a new "E.T.," but at its best, "Transformers" has far more similarities to "The Iron Giant," and that's much higher praise.

There's a lot I could say about this film.  There's a lot I wish could have been kept from the original source material.  While Starscream was awesome in what we saw of him, I wish we could have seen more, and also more of his weird sub/dom relationship with Megatron.  I wish we could have seen more of Megatron's freewheeling psychosis (and thus maybe actually used Hugo Weaving).  I wish Scatman Crothers was still alive to voice Jazz, because it actually hurt to hear someone else doing his voice.  I wish that the part of the cast that played the wackiest bits for laughs had mentioned it to the part of the cast that was playing those parts straight, and that none of those things had involved a giant robot being peed on by a Chihuahua. Or really, any peeing.  None of the peeing was necessary.  Trust me on this.

But not all the changes were bad.  I can accept this rewrite of the Witwicky clan, because I can pretend the real Spike and Sparkplug are distant relatives.  I can deal with Mikaela as a revamped Carly, especially when Megan Fox so clearly throws herself into the role.  I can delight in random tiny homicidal robots.  I can giggle and point at the screen when Tom Lenk appears.  It's fun.